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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a law to ban TikTok can go ahead. This means that starting Sunday, a social media platform used by more than 150 million Americans a day on their iPhone or Android will go dark.
Or will it?
Why a TikTok ban?
The U.S. Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in April 2024 targeting TikTok. It requires its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the U.S. division of the video/social media service to an American company by Sunday, January 19.
Amid a worsening trade war between the two countries, Congress’s concern is that the Chinese government will use TikTok to spread pro-China propaganda and misinformation to users of the app, or use ByteDance’s customer records to target Americans.
If that seems unreasonable, note that the Supreme Court pointed out in its ruling, “ByteDance Ltd. is subject to Chinese laws that require it to ‘assist or cooperate’ with the Chinese Government’s ‘intelligence work’ and to ensure that the Chinese Government has ‘the power to access and control private data’ the company holds.”
TikTok gets ready to go dark
ByteDance has not sold its U.S. division and doesn’t seem to have shown any interest in doing so, so the terms of the PAFACA Act will go into effect. This means that on Sunday, Apple will be required to remove TikTok from the iPhone and iPad App Store. The same goes for Google and its Android software marketplace. But that’s not all.
“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” the China-based service said Friday.
That’s because federal law enforcement can use the PAFACA Act to levy hefty fines on internet service providers who enable TikTok to reach their customers after a ban goes into place.
It might not happen
Sunday is the last day of the Biden Administration, and the President says he won’t enforce the TikTok ban. Instead, that will be left up to the incoming Trump Administration.
Trump originally led the attack on TikTok during his first administration, but since reversed himself.
“You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points, and there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it,” Trump said in December. (He actually lost among young voters, but not as badly as he did in 2020.)
The legislation gives Trump the power to delay enforcement of the PAFACA Act for 90 days, and he told NBC on Saturday that he’ll probably do that.
After that, he can tell the Justice Department not to enforce it, but he can’t repeal a law passed by Congress by presidential decree. Even if Trump assures Apple and Google that there’ll be no penalties if they put TikTok back in their app stores, they’ll still be breaking the law by doing so.
Trump can urge Congress to repeal the law, but that’s likely to be an uphill fight. The PAFACA Act passed the House of Representatives 360-58 and the Senate 79-18 — overwhelming margins in both houses.
Another option is actually finding a U.S. buyer for the U.S. division of ByteDance. Trump supporter Elon Musk (who already owns rival social-media service X) reportedly talked to the Chinese company about the prospect. A big stumbling block, though, is that ByteDance doesn’t seem interested in selling to anyone.
While China’s President Xi Jinping expressed his support for ByteDance and TikTok, what he can do is limited. He can’t retaliate by threatening to kick social media services owned by U.S. companies out of his country — all of these were banned in China years ago, long before there was any talk of a U.S. TikTok ban.