It’s been almost exactly a year since the last significant threat of a TikTok ban in the US. This time, a bill to ban the popular social media app on American shores passed unanimously in the House of Representatives. Given bipartisan support, the bill could potentially slide through the Senate and land on President Joe Biden’s desk within weeks.
The prospect of a total American ban now seems very real.
What this would mean, how it would work, and what comes next are largely unchanged from when we wrote this story last year.
TikTok’s never-ending stream of lip-sync videos, illusions and air fryer recipes may seem harmless enough, but the app now faces the very serious threat of a US ban.
Over the past year, TikTok has found itself in the eye of a political storm that has seen it banned from government devices in the US, EU and now the UK. But it’s the very real prospect of an outright TikTok ban in the US that has the app’s millions of users worried.
The US government, including the current Biden administration, has been investigating TikTok and its relationship with its China-based parent company for several years.
The app has responded to allegations that it collects and stores US users’ data by making several changes, including moving all US data to Oracle’s servers. But none of this has allayed US concerns that the app poses a threat to national security. Last year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress to defend the app.
So what does this all mean for TikTok’s hundreds of millions of global users, and especially the 150 million who live in the US? Here’s everything you need to know about the prospect of a TikTok ban in the US.
Why is the TikTok ban possibly happening?
The main accusation behind the possible TikTok ban in the US is that the app poses a threat to national security. But wait, aren’t most TikTok videos just frivolous video game walkthroughs and TV show clips?
Yes, but the problem isn’t so much the content, but more what TikTok could do with the underlying data it collects – about your likes and comments, as well as where you are in the world and who you interact with.
For example, in February, FBI Director Christopher Wray expressed “extreme” concerns about the potential for China to “weaponize” data collected from TikTok’s American fans.
This stems from the fact that TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance – and Chinese law allows the government to force any company to hand over data they keep on their servers.
Another of Wray’s accusations was that the Chinese government could strong-arm TikTok in a way that would allow it to “control its recommendation algorithm,” giving it enormous potential influence as more people than ever get their news from TikTok and Get YouTube.
While there is currently no hard evidence that TikTok is widespread, it (like Facebook and Instagram) does collect a lot of user data. Last year, four employees were also fired at TikTok’s parent company ByteDance for allegedly collecting usage data from American journalists.
Whether all of this poses enough security risks for the US government to take the unprecedented step of a complete TikTok ban remains to be seen. On March 7, 2023, a new law made it easier for the US government to ban apps that pose a threat to national security.
But on March 22, 2023, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew argued that the app has “never shared U.S. user data” and has a “responsibility to protect its 150 million U.S. users.”
How would a TikTok ban work?
We’ve actually already seen how a TikTok ban would most likely work in practice. In September 2020, the US Department of Commerce issued an injunction ordering both Apple and Google to remove TikTok and WeChat from their US app stores.
This ban was ultimately blocked by a federal judge and ultimately rescinded by President Biden last year, but the incident gives us a taste of what could happen if TikTok’s owners refuse to divest their stakes in the app.
If US users are unable to download TikTok from the iOS or Android app stores, they would lose access to future updates. And after a while, this would probably cause the app to stop working on their smartphones.
It may also be possible that the US government can prevent access to TikTok by identifying your IP address and preventing access to the web version of the app. But it is not yet clear whether that is possible, and there may be possible ways around this.
Is there a way to get around a possible TikTok ban?
While a ban on TikTok appearing on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store would be a major obstacle to the app’s use in the US, there could be possible solutions if that were to happen.
The most obvious way would be to use one of the best mobile VPNs to change your location (at least in the eyes of your ISP). While this will incur a monthly fee, the method could work as long as you choose a server that is in a country where TikTok is not banned.
Our best mobile VPN at the moment is ExpressVPN, although NordVPN and Surfshark are also good choices. That said, there’s a chance that even these VPNs won’t be able to get around a TikTok ban in the US.
says TikTok that it “collects your approximate location information based on your device or network information, such as SIM card and IP address.” In theory, this means that your device can still use that raw location data to ban you from using the service.
If so, your best hope may be the rise of spin-off TikTok apps, which is what happened in India when the country banned the app in 2020.