Is a TikTok ban coming to the US?

What happens if TikTok gets banned?

The road to banning TikTok will be a difficult one, legally speaking.

That’s because US Congress cannot ban a social media platform unless it can prove that it poses legitimate threats to privacy and national security. It also has to prove that eliminating these risks would be impossible using any other method.

This will be tough to prove in court, as it will require substantial evidence that the Chinese government has pulled sensitive user data from TikTok. Occasional evidence has emerged from employees of ByteDance themselves, but Congress has not put forward any of its own examples yet.

Regardless, a large majority of key players are in support of the bill – even former US President Donald Trump has changed his tone.

Donald Trump weighs in on the possible TikTok ban:

“There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it… The thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people.” pic.twitter.com/2Fhg1p8VTk

— Pop Base (@PopBase) March 12, 2024

Despite having attempted to ban the platform back in 2020, Trump U-turned on his views, stating it would give unfair advantages to Meta and proceeded to label Facebook as ‘an enemy of the people’.

But many would argue that TikTok is an enemy of most people, despite how much it entertains us.

Gen Z spends as many as 12.4 hours on the Chinese platform every week. It soared to popularity during the lockdowns of 2020 as a welcome source of distraction from the global chaos that was ensuing due to the pandemic.

Nowadays, young people report feelings of anxiety, depression, and negative self-image after using TikTok. In an interesting twist, those who feel they have an unhealthy relationship with the platform have even pleaded with Congress members to approve the ban.

https://twitter.com/fatfabfeminist/status/1766296252814086285

Could the bill flop?

Possibly.

Those against a ban bill say that it would be a serious violation of America’s First Amendment, specifically their constitutional right to freedom of expression.

Of course, it doesn’t help that TikTok is used by thousands of businesses, artists, and content creators across America. The loss of the platform would likely damage these businesses by denying 170 million American users access to the app.

When lawmakers in the state of Montana attempted to ban TikTok, a federal judge blocked the proposal. A similar situation happened when Donald Trump tried to ban it twice during his presidency.

Faced with these obstacles, lawmakers could establish stronger legislation around digital privacy. These would likely be welcome, as decades have passed with loose legal measures in place to deal with data scraping and digital privacy breaches by large companies and independent criminals.

We’ll have to see what happens when the vote reaches the House this week.