Americans might soon need one of the best VPN apps to continue using TikTok.
A US TikTok ban now seems more likely than ever following the federal appeals court’s decision on Friday (December 6, 2024). The decision upholds a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the video-sharing app to a US company by January 19, 2025 or face a nationwide ban.
While TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew plans to file a legal appeal to the US Supreme Court, the new Trump administration – which will begin a day after the divestiture deadline – is also expected to reverse TikTok’s new policies.
Why does the US want to ban TikTok?
Tensions between the US government and TikTok are not new. The platform’s invasive data collection practices and ties to China have raised concerns about Americans’ privacy rights and national security risks since the video-sharing app began gaining popularity in the United States.
At the time, US President Donald Trump was the first to urge the Chinese company to divest or risk a total ban in 2020. Such plans would later be paused after TikTok filed a lawsuit against the US government and the new president Joe Biden had withdrawn the agreement. unit of measurement.
Now, about four years later, the tables have turned again. Trump vowed to save TikTok during his political campaign reported the Financial Times“maintaining competition in a market dominated by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.”
On the contrary, Biden has been trying to find a solution to the TikTok problem since late 2022, when he first signed an unprecedented order banning TikTok from all federal government devices.
After that, there were several attempts to find a way to overcome the legal challenges of TikTok’s ban, such as the First Amendment that protects America’s freedom of speech. The proposed RESTRICT ACT gained momentum in 2023, but ultimately failed to get the green light.
Do you know?
Montana was the first US state expected to ban TikTok from all devices starting January 1, 2024. However, this did not happen, as a federal judge blocked the law from being enforced in November 2023. Now, after Friday’s decision, the fortunes of Montana’s TikTok ban may turn again.
Fast forward to April 2024, a new proposal (Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act) became law after bipartisan support in the U.S. House of Representatives. It rules out a widespread ban on TikTok’s activities unless ByteDance sells it to a US company.
The law went into effect despite TikTok taking steps to ensure data privacy for US users. In 2022, the company moved all US data to servers owned by Oracle US and located in the country. The company also opened the first data center in Europe on similar grounds a year later.
Perhaps the most downloaded app in the world, TikTok has more than 150 active users per month in the US alone.
Researchers suggest that Americans are increasingly using the app to stay up to date with the news. American activists are also using the Chinese social media giant to spread their messages, while it is also helping American businesses – especially the smallest ones – thrive.
This is why digital rights experts are concerned after the decision filed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday.
Kate Ruane of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) told Ny Breaking: “The TikTok ban will do immeasurable damage to the free speech of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in the US and worldwide who use the app to create information, share information We hope that the next phase of the review of this misleading and overly broad law will be an opportunity to right this injustice and prevent it from coming into force.”
How a TikTok VPN can help
A VPN (short for Virtual Private Network) is security software that encrypts all your Internet connections to prevent third-party access while spoofing your real IP address location. The latter is exactly what you need to get around geo-restrictions on social media platforms, such as those that could soon be imposed against TikTok in the US.
If ByteDance refuses to sell before January 19, US authorities could block TikTok use at the ISP (internet service provider) level. In this scenario, using a TikTok VPN is an easy way to bypass the block by simply connecting to a VPN server located outside the US, in a country where TikTok is not banned.
Another option could be for the US government to order app stores to completely remove TikTok from their platforms. This means that you cannot download and install the app from the official stores and will have to find an alternative source instead.
However, experts warn that such a move would de facto put user data at great risk, as US users will not be able to continue updating their TikTok application to fix security issues. Furthermore, the risks of malware infections are higher when downloading apps from unofficial stores.