SUBSCRIBE NEWSLETTERS
ADVERTISE| CLASSIFIEDS| JOBS| E-TRIB
HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS NETWORK TRIBLIVE LOCAL
Western Pennsylvania's trusted news source
Is there a future for TikTok in the U.S.? | TribLIVE.com
Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff, dies at 88
Technology

Is there a future for TikTok in the U.S.?

Megan Swift
Megan Swift
8006379_web1_7812003-f542cddd8f704ea7a6cd1cbf36f4a166
AP
The TikTok logo is seen on their building in Culver City, Calif., March 11, 2024.

The future of the popular social media app TikTok is growing murkier.

A court ruling Friday indicates TikTok will be banned next year in the United States unless it’s sold before then — which is unlikely, according to experts.

Jessica Ghilani, associate professor of communication and Cyber Institute Affiliate Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, said the situation is complicated.

“We don’t really know what the future holds,” she said. “There’s a lot of moving parts with this conversation.”

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, The Associated Press reported.

The law was signed by President Joe Biden in April — culminating years of controversy in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China, the AP said.

TikTok had challenged the law, saying the potential U.S. ban violated the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform.

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion read on Friday. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”

Ghilani said she wasn’t surprised by the decision.

“I personally have been surprised by the degree to which folks don’t seem concerned about the ban going through because, as I was following the court case, it was very clear to me that this decision was going to be upheld,” she said.

Social media users on X reacted to Friday’s news.

Potential enforcement

Ghilani said she’s unsure how the potential ban of the platform would be enforced.

“It wouldn’t be allowed to be in the app store … (it) wouldn’t be able to be updated for people who already have it on their phone,” she said. “It would eventually no longer be supported, eventually become an obsolete thing that is just on your phone but not usable — that’s my guess.”

TikTok needs to be connected online, so there could be a way to enforce the ban similar to how cable networks black out certain sporting events, according to Ghilani.

Users have been discussing ways to circumvent the ban if it goes through, and they agreed that one such way would be a Virtual Private Network, or VPN.

But the ban’s criminal penalties include a fine up to a million dollars and/or imprisonment of up to 20 years, which has caused TikTok fans to speculate whether they would be subject to jail time for using VPN, Newsweek reported.

A spokesperson for Senator Mark Warner, the bill’s sponsor, confirmed to Newsweek that it would not apply to individual users.

“Under the terms of the bill, someone must be engaged in ‘sabotage or subversion’ of communications technology in the U.S., causing ‘catastrophic effects’ on U.S. critical infrastructure, or ‘interfering in, or altering the result’ of a federal election in order for criminal penalties to apply,” Warner’s communications director, Rachel Cohen, said, Newsweek reported.

TikTok and ByteDance are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” TikTok’s attorneys argued. “Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people.”

There is a chance the Supreme Court could determine that the legal challenge holds sufficient merit to delay implementation of the ban as the court weighs the case, ABC News said.

The law allows for a 90-day extension of the deadline for a TikTok sale, as long as the company is advancing toward an agreement, but Ghilani said it’s unlikely Biden will grant one.

“The company would’ve had to have made significant overtures toward the divestment of ownership or toward the transfer of ownership to a U.S.-basaed owner,” she said. “That hasn’t happened, and ByteDance has been very clear that that will not happen, so I’m guessing that because the provisions haven’t been met, the extension won’t be granted.”

Governmental support

President-elect Donald Trump has said he would oppose the potential ban of TikTok, and he’s expected to try to stop it, according to the Washington Post.

Ghilani said Trump could issue an executive order as soon as he begins his second term to stop the ban.

“While that may not technically be legal for him to do … a Republican congress would not stop (him),” she said.

Trump’s position may have changed because of how many American investors have money at stake, according to Ghilani, including the private equity company the Carlyle Group and Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, who is a ByteDance investor.

“There’s less of the same enthusiasm for the ban,” she said.

Megan Swift is a TribLive reporter covering trending news in Western Pennsylvania. A Murrysville native, she joined the Trib full time in 2023 after serving as editor-in-chief of The Daily Collegian at Penn State. She previously worked as a Jim Borden Scholarship intern at the Trib for three summers. She can be reached at mswift@triblive.com.

Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.

Get Ad-Free >

Categories: Business | Technology | Top Stories
Content you may have missed