TikTok made a final appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday in an effort to block a looming ban on the app, but its arguments appear to have fallen flat.
A majority of justices seem likely to uphold a federal law requiring TikTok to sever ties with its China-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a ban. TikTok has argued that the law violates First Amendment rights, claiming that banning the app would restrict free expression on a platform used by nearly half of Americans. However, lower courts have supported the government’s concerns over potential data collection or content manipulation by the Chinese government.
If the Supreme Court challenge fails and TikTok does not sell its U.S. operations, the ban will take effect on January 19, just a day before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Experts say the law, known as Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, would not penalize individual users for accessing or using TikTok after the ban. Instead, the law targets third-party companies essential to TikTok’s operations, including app stores and hosting providers.
The ban would require Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores, preventing new downloads and updates for existing users. Without updates, experts say the app would gradually degrade, causing slower video loading and performance glitches.
“If the app can’t download updates, it would eventually become obsolete,” said Qi Liao, a computer science professor at Central Michigan University.
The law would also bar U.S.-based hosting companies from supporting TikTok, which could cause the app to stop functioning. Hosting services include file hosting, domain name servers, and cloud infrastructure, all crucial for TikTok’s operation.
“To access TikTok content, it has to be hosted somewhere,” explained Timothy Edgar, a computer science professor at Brown University and former national security official.
In theory, TikTok could partner with hosting companies outside the U.S., beyond the reach of U.S. regulations. However, this workaround would result in slower and less reliable service due to the distance of the infrastructure from U.S. users.
“The whole purpose of hosting is to keep content close to users,” Edgar noted. “Moving infrastructure offshore would likely make the app glitchy and inefficient.”
Experts believe TikTok may avoid such legal risks and opt to shut down its U.S. platform entirely if the ban takes effect, as it did in India following a similar prohibition in 2020.
“You’d likely see a message saying, ‘This app is not available in your country,'” Edgar said.
Despite service interruptions, users could still access TikTok through workarounds like virtual private networks (VPNs), experts said. However, these methods would involve technical challenges and lower app quality, which might deter some users.
“If someone is determined to use TikTok, they’ll find a way,” Liao said.
Importantly, accessing TikTok through such methods would not be illegal for users. “Ordinary users with TikTok on their phones are not criminals,” Edgar clarified. “There are no penalties for using the app.”
