Hang on a minute, is TikTok actually getting banned in the US? Here’s what you need to know

If your TikTok For You Page is anything like mine right now, or even when you’ve scrolled on Twitter / X if you still have the energy to actually be active on there, you might have seen an onslaught of memes and content regarding the final days of TikTok from American content creators. If you’re also anything like me, you might find this a bit perplexing. As a UK resident, I vaguely remember some motion that TikTok was going to get banned in the US but at the time never thought anything would come of it. And yet it now truly seems like it’s happening – here’s everything you need to know about TikTok getting banned in the US and why it’s all happening.

Congress passed the ban law in April of this year

The long and short of it is this: Congress passed the law in April that Chinese-owned company TikTok poses “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale” based on data on American users, including private messages. On January 6th TikTok and ByteDance – its parent company – tried to appeal on free speech grounds but were denied.

If TikTok and ByteDance don’t divest the app to the US by the 19th January, they will face a ban. Yesterday, TikTok and ByteDance filed for an emergency injunction to the Supreme Court to try and postpone the ruling.

In the request to the Supreme Court, TikTok and ByteDance said “If Americans, duly informed of the alleged risks of ‘covert’ content manipulation, choose to continue viewing content on TikTok with their eyes wide open, the first amendment entrusts them with making that choice, free from the government’s censorship.”

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“And if the DC circuit’s contrary holding stands, then Congress will have free rein to ban any American from speaking simply by identifying some risk that the speech is influenced by a foreign entity,” they added.

@alexis.taliento Wait i can’t believe this is happening 🫢🫢 #tiktokban #tiktok #news #tiktokbanupdate #contentcreators #microinfluencer #tiktok ♬ original sound – Alexis Taliento

What’s TikTok said about the data worries the US has?

Basically, the company has said there isn’t any data threat to the country and that the US is silencing one of the “most important speech platforms”. The issue also comes from the fact that the ruling would be 19th January – which is one day before Donald Trump becomes president and a new administration begins in the US.

Right, but didn’t Trump want to ban TikTok but failed?

Yeah. But now Donald Trump has u-turned on his position regarding TikTok. On Monday, he said he has “a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” and said he’s look into sorting the matter.

But yes, it looks like as of right now TikTok will actually get banned in the US – despite the company having denied that it has or ever would share US user data.

TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes says: “We are asking the court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the first amendment.”

The DC ruling from the US reads:“The first amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. 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.”

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Photo by Brandon Mowinkel on Unsplash