TikTok: What a practical ban in the US means and why users cannot easily override it

End on Sunday 19.01.2024. The Supreme Court ratified on Friday (17.01.2025) a law prohibiting the application of TikTok in the US, unless China-based parent company ByteDance sells the platform until 19 January, i.e. one day before Donald Trump’s inauguration. The federal ban that enters into force from 19 January in the US provides that new users will be prohibited from downloading TikTok’s application from Apple or Google’s online stores. CORVERSE However, existing users will still have access to this, although the services provided to them are expected to be gradually limited and eventually stopped, as other companies will be prohibited from supporting Chinese-owned social media. The ban arises from a law signed in April by President Joe Biden and is the first time the United States has attempted to close access to an application with such a large user base – about 170 million users in the US. The White House, in a statement by Karin Jean-Pierre’s representative, points out that Joe Biden’s position is that TikTok should be available in the US, but with American property or property that does not cause any problems for national security. He also points out that TikTok’s future in the country will be cleared with Trump governance. “It is ultimately up to me, so you will see what I will do,” Donald Trump told CNN after the decision was made. “Congress gave me the decision, so I’ll decide”. Trump also confirmed that he had a conversation with the Chinese president Shi Jinping , saying they had “a great conversation about TikTok and a great debate on many other issues”. The court, however, noted that Trump once wanted to ban TikTok. The Supreme Court decision was chosen, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too representative future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned! Donald Trump Truth Social 11:14 AM EST 01/17/25 — Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) What users will do The law will not force users to delete the application, but TikTok plans to shut down the service and show users a message about the law and offer them to let them download their personal data according to . Even if TikTok did not plan official closure, the application would not work as well as before. Application store providers are expressly forbidden to distribute TikTok to US users, which means Apple, and Alphabet Google, will remove the application from their stores and no longer distribute updates to correct errors. TikTok is also based on a continuous stream of new videos, which would be almost impossible to provide. TikTok’s data for US users are hosted and processed on Oracle-owned servers, which, according to most experts, should interrupt these functions. Beyond that, analyses have shown that more than 100 other service providers, such as content distribution networks, help smoothly operate TikTok. “Uplifting can be one of the first things to be lost. Americans may be able to watch only as their application collapses,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, a noted technologist of the non-governmental Internet Society. Disconnecting these service providers could also affect tens of millions of TikTok users outside the US, but company engineers work to address these issues, said sources to Reuters. Two phones and a trip to Toronto… The simplest solution for Americans to maintain Tik Tok would be to use a virtual private network or VPN, which could hide a user’s internet or IP protocol address and thus its location, notes the report. But TikTok has other means to know the exact location of the user, such as geographic location data from a phone, said Jason Kelley, director of activism of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Users could try to access an online version of TikTok via a browser while using a VPN, but the online version lacks many features of the application and – if the user has to create a new account – it will not be so personalized in its preferences. Some users have looked for solutions such as changing an iPhone settings to a different country in an attempt to continue using the application. However, this would require the cancellation of existing application subscriptions and the regulation of a new payment method for the country concerned, according to Apple’s documentation. This alone is a inconvenience and it may be easier to buy another phone just for the application, which would mean that Congress “forces” the population of influencers to have two phones, just as most of them do”. But even changing an iPhone settings in a different country is not a simple solution. The law prohibits Apple and other application providers from handing over the TikTok application to users in the US, regardless of how their devices have been configured, so a user should continue to be outside the United States if he wants to download it.