US banning TikTok? Your key questions answered

No, TikTok volition not abruptly vanish from your phone. Nor volition you spell to jailhouse if you proceed utilizing it aft it is banned.

President Joe Biden signed into instrumentality connected Wednesday a $95 cardinal warfare assistance measure that includes assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and that besides has a proviso that would unit societal media tract TikTok to beryllium sold oregon beryllium banned successful the U.S.

The proviso gives TikTok's Beijing-based genitor company, ByteDance, 9 months to merchantability it oregon look a nationwide prohibition successful the United States. The president tin assistance a one-time hold of 90 days, bringing the timeline to merchantability to 1 year, if helium certifies that there's a way to divestiture and "significant progress" toward executing it.

The medication and a bipartisan radical of lawmakers person called the societal media tract a increasing nationalist information concern.

TikTok said volition wage a ineligible situation against what it called an "unconstitutional" effort by Congress.

So what does this mean for you, a TikTok user, oregon possibly the genitor of a TikTok user? Here are immoderate cardinal questions and answers.

WHEN DOES THE BAN GO INTO EFFECT?

The archetypal connection gave ByteDance conscionable six months to divest from its U.S. subsidiary, negotiations lengthened it to nine. Then, if the merchantability is already successful progress, the institution volition get different 3 months to implicit it.

So it would beryllium astatine slightest a twelvemonth earlier a prohibition goes into effect - but with apt tribunal challenges, this could agelong adjacent longer, possibly years. TikTok has seen immoderate occurrence with tribunal challenges successful the past, but it has ne'er sought to forestall national authorities from going into effect.

WHAT IF I ALREADY DOWNLOADED IT?

TikTok, which is utilized by much than 170 cardinal Americans, astir apt won't vanish from your telephone adjacent if an eventual prohibition does instrumentality effect. But it would vanish from Apple and Google's app stores, which means users won't beryllium capable to download it. This would besides mean that TikTok wouldn't beryllium capable to nonstop updates, information patches and bug fixes, and implicit clip the app would apt go unusable - not to notation a information risk.

BUT SURELY THERE ARE WORKAROUNDS?

Teenagers are known for circumventing parental controls and bans erstwhile it comes to societal media, truthful dodging the U.S. government's prohibition is surely not extracurricular the realm of possibilities. For instance, users could effort to disguise their determination utilizing a VPN, oregon virtual backstage network, usage alternate app stores oregon adjacent instal a overseas SIM paper into their phone.

But immoderate tech savvy is required, and it's not wide what volition and won't work. More likely, users volition migrate to different level - specified arsenic Instagram, which has a TikTok-like diagnostic called Reels, oregon YouTube, which has incorporated vertical abbreviated videos successful its provender to effort to vie with TikTok. Often, specified videos are taken straight from TikTok itself. And fashionable creators are apt to beryllium recovered connected different platforms arsenic well, truthful you'll astir apt beryllium capable to spot the aforesaid stuff.

"The TikTok measure relies heavy connected the power that Apple and Google support implicit their smartphone platforms due to the fact that the bill's superior mechanics is to nonstop Apple and Google to halt allowing the TikTok app connected their respective app stores," said Dean Ball, a probe chap with the Mercatus Center astatine George Mason University. "Such a mechanics mightiness beryllium overmuch little effectual successful the satellite envisioned by galore advocates of antitrust and assertive regularisation against the ample tech firms."