TikTok may finally be meeting its end in a month if a warning from US lawmakers is anything to go by. TikTok is one of the biggest apps in the entire world and has managed to change the way a lot of people consume content in less than a decade. While Vine was really the start of snappy, short content, that app was relatively short lived. TikTok was able to take its place and really own the space for that type of media.
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The app allows people to upload short clips (typically a minute or two, but longer videos are possible), host live streams, and even make affiliate content that allows creators the opportunity to make money by making sponsored TikToks. It’s a huge app that’s highly addicting due to the fact you can scroll endlessly and get new, quick content rapidly. It even spawned rivals from other major social media apps such as Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, but TikTok largely reigns supreme.
However, TikTok has also drummed up all kinds of controversy over the years, leading to calls for it to be banned. The United States government has been looking to get rid of TikTok for several years now and it’s looking like that may soon take effect. The United States has been concerned for quite some time about TikTok’s Chinese owners, ByteDance, and security/data concerns. Earlier in 2024, President Biden signed a bill saying TikTok could continue to operate in the States so long as ByteDance sold the app to a non-Chinese entity by January 2025.
With January fast approaching, ByteDance has yet to sell TikTok and there’s no word of any serious talks to actually do so. As such, Reuters has reported that US lawmakers have told Apple and Google to prepare to delist TikTok on January 19th from its app stores. The app would still function for those who have it downloaded, but by removing it from the app store, it would mean the app would eventually become unusable due to future updates being unavailable to United States users.
January 19th is notably the day before Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States. Ironically, Trump is the one who kicked things off for a potential TikTok ban during his first presidency. However, he has recently changed his position on the matter and seeks to prevent a TikTok ban. It’s not clear if President-elect Trump could feasibly reverse the TikTok ban once he’s back in office, the day after TikTok is expected to be removed from the app stores.
Even if President-elect Trump could get the TikTok ban lifted, it seems unlikely such a thing would happen over night. The fact that it’s only just now getting banned after Trump set this whole thing into motion back in 2020 shows that these things move very slowly. Undoing everything would likely also take some time. However, the Trump campaign was able to rally voters via social media apps like TikTok in order to win the most recent election, so it’s likely something Trump would want to protect as much as possible.
Of course, it’s also possible that ByteDance does find a buyer for TikTok before January 19th. There are likely numerous people and companies chomping at the bit to get a piece of that pie, but it all comes down to if ByteDance feels that is truly its only option. TikTok has tried to fight back against this ban by calling it unconstitutional, but it doesn’t appear to have helped the app much. Either way, this is a pretty dramatic series of events that TikTok users will want to keep a close eye on in the weeks to come. If you’re someone with any interest in TikTok, it’s probably in your best interest to keep the app updated and make sure it’s installed on your phone if you want to keep using it for the foreseeable future.
