Lawmakers' months-long fight to ban the social media app TikTok in the United States came to a head Friday as the Supreme Court heard arguments to decide the app's fate for its 170 million American users.
While judges across the ideological spectrum asked tough questions of both sides, the overall tone and direction seemed to suggest greater skepticism toward arguments by TikTok's lawyers and its users that the First Amendment prohibited Congress from enacting the law.
If TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is banned on January 19, here's what users can expect to happen:
Will TikTok still be available for download in app stores?
No. He law passed by Congress last year would make it illegal for app stores from companies like Apple and Google to distribute or issue TikTok updates at the risk of hefty civil penalties: $5,000 per U.S. user, which could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. dollars.
If TikTok is banned, it will likely disappear from app stores overnight. (Apple and Google have not commented on their plans to remove the app.)
Apple has long complied with foreign governments that have ordered the removal of apps in their countries. Last April, for example, Apple removed communication apps such as WhatsApp, Signal, Threads and Telegram from its app store in China at the request of the Chinese government.
Will the TikTok app still be on my phone if I've already downloaded it?
Yes. The law does not prohibit having the TikTok app on your phone.
“The letter of the law is about future downloads and updates,” said Dean Ball, a researcher at the Mercatus Center, a think tank at George Mason University. “It's not about removing the app from people's phones.”
But without ByteDance's ability to release updates to TikTok through the app stores, the app will likely degrade over time. Still, advertisers anticipate some use in the United States after the ban, and as of last month, new contracts were still being signed to advertise on the app, said Craig Atkinson, chief executive of Code3, a digital marketing agency.
TikTok can also intervene before the app is downgraded and block its users in the United States from accessing videos on the platform after January 19.
In India, which banned TikTok in 2020, users of the app are faced with a screen that says “Service Unavailable” and blocks users from its platform.
TikTok has not said whether it will limit access to the app if it is banned and did not respond to a request for comment.
Would TikTok still be accessible from an internet browser?
No. In addition to prohibiting app store companies from hosting the app, the law applies to internet hosting companies.
However, users will likely still have access to TikTok if they use a virtual private network, or VPN, which encrypts the user's location.
The ban “could even be a major business boost for VPN providers,” Atkinson said.
Could President-elect Donald J. Trump step in and save the app?
Some experts believe Apple and Google may decide not to comply with the law, betting that President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has come out in favor of TikTok, would order his attorney general not to enforce it.
“But unless some new information is added to the equation, I would be very surprised if Apple and Google did that,” Ball said.
Trump could also change his mind, or even use the threat of enforcement as leverage against the two companies, said JB Ferguson, a technology-focused managing director at Capstone.
“I don't know if you're adequately defending shareholder value if you don't take the law seriously, even if you believe Trump,” Ferguson said of Apple and Google.
