You may have seen the recent news that TikTok will be banned in the United States. This is because a bill was signed this Wednesday stating that TikTok could potentially be banned. This bill had an overwhelming amount of support in Congress in March, and on Tuesday, it was passed by the Senate with a vote of 79-18.
You may be thinking, “what does this bill actually say, and if it’s banned, why can I still use TikTok?”
TikTok is not actually banned as many are claiming; the main objective of this bill is to “force [parent company] ByteDance to sell TikTok to a company not forced to give all of its users information to the Chinese government,” according to multiple Senators.
The parent company of TikTok (ByteDance) will likely take this to the Supreme Court and argue the bill is constitutional and goes against the first amendment. If this does not happen, and ByteDance for some reason refuses to sell TikTok, the platform will no longer be allowed to be hosted on American Internet services and app stores in January 2025. Other companies will likely replace TikTok like Youtube Shorts and Instagram Reels, similar to what happened when India banned TikTok 4 years ago.
For now, you have nothing to worry about, as TikTok is not going away anytime soon.
Sources:
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/24/1246663779/biden-ban-tiktok-us
https://apnews.com/article/india-tiktok-ban-us-china-9ae5223bce78c56e5d22a1f2e86510f0
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/04/19/tiktok-ban-bill-law/73377253007/
