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After seven years in the US, TikTok could go dark for its US-based users as soon as this weekend. The app’s future is currently in the hands of the Supreme Court, which is expected to decide any day—or even minute—whether to uphold a ban that’s set to kick in on January 19, the deadline set by President Biden and Congress when they legislated the ban in April last year, citing national security concerns linked to TikTok’s ownership by a Chinese company. While the court’s ruling is still uncertain, several experts told The Verge that the justices didn’t seem swayed by the last-ditch plea of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance—essentially, that the ban violates the First Amendment—during oral arguments last week. If the ban is enforced, it could be one of the most significant interventions that the US government has made in the social media landscape, affecting a hundred and seventy million Americans.
According to The Information, citing anonymous sources, if TikTok is banned, it will immediately shut off for its existing US-based users—a departure from the prior expectation that it would remain accessible to people who have already downloaded it. (When opening the app post-ban, users are now expected to see a pop-up message that directs them to information about the ban.) Per NBC News, however, the outgoing Biden administration is exploring options to avoid this immediate outcome. Whatever happens on that front, it will certainly become illegal for app stores owned by Google and Apple to distribute, maintain, or update the app within the US if the ban goes into effect. Violating these rules will result in a hefty five-thousand-dollar fine per American user, which, as the New York Times notes, would add up to a penalty of billions of dollars.
Rival platforms are poised to swoop in as soon as TikTok is out of the picture; indeed, some are already benefiting from the impending ban. Meta and Google stand to gain the most financially, according to a new analysis from eMarketer; TikTok had challenged both companies’ dominance of the digital advertising market, but they could now collectively mop up more than half of the ad spending on TikTok. Platforms owned by Meta and Google have also tried to copy TikTok by developing their own short-form video features. These will surely see a flow of new users should a ban be enforced—though some TikTok users have expressed outright resistance to the idea of switching to a Meta platform, claiming that the company’s “reels” feature on Instagram is out of date and lacks TikTok’s captivating (and, some would say, highly addictive) personalized algorithm. “I would rather dropship my DNA to the CCP before I watch an Instagram reel,” one influencer quipped (referring to the Chinese Communist Party).
Wanting to stay within the ByteDance universe, and seemingly to spite the US government, thousands of users are already migrating to TikTok’s sister app Lemon8, a lifestyle community–focused platform. According to NBC News, TikTok encouraged this migration by ramping up advertisements for Lemon8 in the run-up to the ban and has even sent notifications to its users suggesting that they download it. The campaign appears to have been effective: Lemon8 is currently ranked number two in Apple’s App Store at the time of this publication. It trails only Xiaohongshu, a different Chinese app independent of ByteDance, which has become another popular alternative to TikTok. Xiaohongshu translates to “Little Red Book” in Mandarin and is sometimes described as the “Instagram of China,” given that actual Instagram is banned in the country. (“The sudden influx of Americans to Xiaohongshu has created an unusual space for exchanges between Chinese and American users,” Rest of World reports—though it seems unlikely that Chinese authorities will tolerate this indefinitely.)
The migration to other Chinese-owned platforms largely makes a mockery of the US government’s central concern in banning TikTok: that any Chinese-owned tech company could pose a national security risk to US citizens. Private entities in China are legally required to hand over users’ data on request—without question—to the CCP; the US government also worries that the CCP could leverage TikTok to influence public opinion on foreign soil. (Some TikTok users have pushed back on such arguments, suggesting that US social media companies, such as Meta, aren’t much better when it comes to harvesting data and setting opinions.) During last week’s hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that the government worries that China could use sensitive data about US users to “develop spies, turn people, blackmail people—people who, a generation from now, will be working in the FBI, the CIA, or the State Department.”
As I wrote last year in this newsletter, the government has flatly acknowledged that there is no direct evidence that China is using TikTok for propaganda purposes, but insists there is a significant risk that it might. The CPP has a tight grip over Chinese social media companies, such as Douyin—the domestic version of TikTok, also owned by ByteDance—which is bound by strict censorship rules. Douyin regularly takes down content deemed inflammatory or sensitive by the state: for instance, pro-LGBTQ content, which the CCP claims promotes “unhealthy and non-mainstream views on marriage and love.” Alan Rozenshtein, an expert at the University of Minnesota Law School, said during an interview with Politico’s tech podcast that there’s no question the Chinese government is already engaged in massive espionage. With regard to TikTok and China, he said: “There’s no smoking gun, but there is a gun, it’s loaded, it’s pointed right at us.… The question for the court to decide is: Is that enough?”
During oral arguments last week, a lawyer for TikTok countered that the US arm of the company is an American entity with First Amendment rights. If the bill is enforced, he argued, it would suppress not only the speech of TikTok as a platform but also that of the hundred and seventy million Americans who use the app to express themselves. TikTok also argued that if Congress can prevent US users from posting on TikTok because of its association with ByteDance, a foreign company, then it could also prevent them from engaging with the BBC, which the British government funds through a license fee, or Al Jazeera, which is partially funded by the government of Qatar. Ultimately, though, the justices seemed unconvinced by TikTok’s free speech argument and more swayed by the government’s warnings about the national security risk.
If January 19 rolls around without a last-minute lifeboat for TikTok, it won’t necessarily be the end for the app in the US—the law banning it stipulated that it could avoid such an outcome by selling, and ByteDance could still choose to divest further down the line. In the past few days, there have been rumors about potential buyers, most notably Elon Musk, who, according to Bloomberg, is in conversation with TikTok about facilitating a sale. TikTok, for its part, denied this report, and maintains that the company has no plans to divest partly because of the complexity of separating its US operations from its global infrastructure. “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction,” a TikTok representative told Variety.
Finally, there is, of course, the Trump factor. While he initially supported a TikTok ban as president, he has since made a U-turn and promised to keep the app legal in the US. Last month, Trump sent a letter to the Supreme Court urging them to delay the ban, which is set to take effect one day before his inauguration, though lawmakers interviewed by the Washington Post last week questioned how Trump might pull off a rescue mission: “I don’t know how…the president-elect can simply refuse to enforce the law,” Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia, told the paper. “This was not a close call in Congress.” Last night, the Post reported that Trump is considering an early executive order that would suspend enforcement of the TikTok ban to allow time to negotiate an alternative solution—though legal observers quickly expressed skepticism. (Executive orders “are not magical documents,” Rozenshtein told the Post. “They’re just press releases with nicer stationery.”)
The Post itself currently has 1.8 million followers on TikTok, where it posts fun and quirky updates about the news, often featuring the same recurring characters. Indeed, various news publications have tried their luck on the platform, in an attempt to connect with younger audiences who are unlikely to open a physical newspaper; individual journalists have also used the app to present their reporting in short, easily digestible videos. A ban would force these newsrooms and journalists to rethink their strategy. So far, most of them seem to be holding their breath, along with all the other creators on the platform, as they wait for the court to rule and for Trump to return.
Other notable stories:
- Yesterday, news broke that Israel and Hamas had finally agreed to a ceasefire deal to end the war in Gaza, at least for now, in exchange for the release of hostages Hamas militants took after attacking Israel on October 7, 2023—though at time of writing, the Israeli government had yet to sign off on the deal and air strikes were reportedly continuing in Gaza. For CJR, Yona TR Golding assessed how the ceasefire news was greeted on the ground, and spoke with several journalists in Israel. “In Gaza, the announcement precipitated scenes of jubilation,” Golding writes; one Al Jazeera reporter “removed his protective gear, surrounded by a huddle of cheering men.” In Israel, the mood “was hopeful, if perhaps more subdued.” One reporter said: “This is not ‘All the hostages are being released now and everyone gets to breathe a sigh of relief.’”
- This week, Trump’s nominees for key posts have begun facing confirmation hearings. Yesterday, Pam Bondi, his pick for attorney general, testified; she pushed back on the idea that she would politicize the Justice Department and insisted that she wouldn’t go after the media “just because they are the media,” but was evasive on other questions, including related to 2020 election denialism. In other news about Trump nominees, Techdirt evaluated Homeland Security pick Kristi Noem’s recent proposal, as governor of South Dakota, to slash public broadcasting in the state. And The Economist reports that Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, got a telling tip-off about Austin Tice, a US journalist missing in Syria, back in 2019. (She denies this.)
- In Monday’s newsletter, we noted the costs that newsrooms in Los Angeles have borne to better cover the devastating recent fires in the city, from dropping paywalls to skipping lucrative TV commercial breaks. It has since been reported, however, that the fires have at least driven audiences to local outlets. Variety’s Michael Schneider reports that local TV stations saw “tremendous” ratings spikes as the first fires sparked last week. And—while the LA Times estimates that removing its paywall from fire stories led to a lower subscriber conversion rate—its website has apparently seen record-breaking traffic and a huge spike in new subscriptions overall; Nieman Lab has more details.
- Also for Nieman Lab, Matthew Powers, a professor at the University of Washington, outlined recent research suggesting that—despite the widespread narrative that it is in irreversible decline—reporting on statehouses around the country might actually be seeing something of a renaissance. The research “documents the rise of a new generation of statehouse reporters; a growing role for reporters working other beats to bring their expertise to bear on legislative debates; and the influx of new, mostly nonprofit, news organizations whose mission is to fortify state government reporting.”
- And, according to Le Monde, David Pressman—the Biden administration’s combative ambassador to Hungary, which has taken a pronounced authoritarian turn under the government of Viktor Orbán—left the country earlier this week and was followed to the airport by cameras from pro-government propaganda outlets, which have targeted him as a hate figure in recent years. Before leaving, Pressman sat for an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, of the Times, and said that one of the “most alarming” lessons from his tenure is “just how easy it is to actually control people” by weaponizing the media against them.
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