The media app TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, will be banned in the United States as early as this Sunday, unless something extraordinary happens in this short time: either a deal is reached to sell it to an American investor, or the US Supreme Court intervenes.
The media app TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, will be banned in the United States as early as this Sunday, unless something extraordinary happens in this short time: either a deal is reached to sell it to an American investor, or the US Supreme Court intervenes.
According to Reuters, the ban is the result of a law signed last April by President Joe Biden.
This is the first attempt by the United States to block access to an app with such a large base, as TikTok has approximately 170 million users on its devices.
The law will not force users to delete the app, but users will be notified of the law’s effect and will be asked to upload their personal data.
Additionally, app store companies are explicitly prohibited from distributing TikTok to US users, meaning Apple and Google will remove the app from their stores and no longer distribute updates to fix bugs.
In addition, the TikTok app will be virtually unable to keep up with the constant stream of new videos, as TikTok data for US users is hosted and processed on servers owned by Oracle, and the latter must cease these operations.
At the same time, there is a risk that the shutdown of these service providers could also affect tens of millions of TikTok users outside the US, but the company’s engineers are working to resolve these issues.
The easiest solution to maintaining access to TikTok would be to use a VPN, but TikTok has other ways to find out where a user is, such as geolocation data from a phone.
Users can try to access the web version of TikTok through a browser while using a VPN, but the web version lacks many of the features of the mobile app.
Some users in the US have discussed steps such as changing their iPhone’s country settings to another country to continue using the app, but this would require canceling existing app subscriptions and setting up a new payment method for that country.
But even switching your iPhone settings to another country isn’t a simple solution, as the law prohibits Apple and other app store providers from providing TikTok to users in the United States, regardless of how their devices are configured. So, a user would have to leave the United States to download TikTok.
Experts interviewed by Reuters joke that it’s easier to buy a separate phone designed exclusively for the app.
As dev.ua reported, there were earlier rumors that Chinese officials were considering selling the American division of TikTok to Elon Musk if ByteDance failed to win the ban in court.
At the same time, in December last year, the Albanian government already announced a one-year ban on TikTok services. Although it doesn’t even make sense to compare the Albanian and US markets for the Chinese social network.
