People have been talking about banning TikTok almost since before TikTok existed. The app was released under that name in his 2017, but by 2019 it was already banned in many parts of the world.
This means that discussions about banning TikTok in the US and elsewhere can sometimes feel like they're stuck in time. Politicians have raised complaints ranging from national security concerns to concerns about child development, and have threatened to ban the app in response.
Enough has happened that many in the world may be tired of those threats, especially considering how little they seem to happen. But just when we're starting to get tired of talking about TikTok bans, it might finally happen.
This week, the U.S. Senate approved a bill that would force app sales and bans, and Joe Biden signed it into law. The threat of banning looms.
Bans are already in place elsewhere. Billions of people live in countries where his TikTok is not available in some way.
Moreover, these bans were carried out with relative ease. In India, which was a leading country in banning apps, the app was removed from Google and Apple's app stores in the country and is no longer available.
Instagram Reels rushed in to fill that gap. The then-new app borrowed many of the same formats from TikTok, including its musical soundtrack and easily scrollable feed, and quickly captured users who were no longer able to use the original app.
YouTube shorts had much the same success and gained similar popularity. Neither app offered any major innovations, but instead stood out for offering the kind of endlessly satisfying, bite-sized, easily discoverable content that TikTok used to offer.
These apps are already hugely popular in the US, UK, and other countries that have long threatened to ban them in their own countries. Therefore, users in these countries are likely to follow much the same path.
Users of both YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels have a lot of complaints about these platforms in relation to TikTok. Algorithms seem less personalized, recommend different types of content, and have different ways of building apps. But if there are no alternatives, they will definitely use them with pleasure.
The TikTok community has also shown remarkable adaptability to other similar changes. For example, Universal recently removed all songs from the app due to a licensing dispute, but TikTok users were soon using the new sounds and making jokes about the old ones.
Other apps have also been banned in the United States and elsewhere. The power that Google and Apple have over mobile apps means they can be taken down relatively quickly, and the online connections that apps like TikTok rely on can also be severed quickly.
Users may be able to circumvent these bans by using technologies such as virtual private networks, which reroute Internet traffic and make it appear as if it is coming from another location. That definitely will be the case, but many others may simply be happy to go elsewhere.
It will still be a long time before the TikTok ban takes effect. Parent company ByteDance has 270 days to sell its U.S. operations, but the president can extend the deadline after that and have the opportunity to appeal through legal means.
Additionally, ByteDance may simply choose to sell. If that happens, perhaps another US tech company looking to build a platform in the social media and short video market, regular users of TikTok may not notice any changes to the app at all. yeah.
But that deadline is still much closer than it was before the Senate approved the new bill. And banning may be easier and more likely than you think.