On Friday, the Supreme Court will hear oral discussions regarding the future of TikTok in the United States, which may result in the popular application being banned as early as next week.
The justices will deliberate on whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the legislation aimed at TikTok’s prohibition and imposing severe civil penalties on app ‘entities’ that persist in offering the service after January 19, infringes upon the free speech protections outlined in the U.S. Constitution.
The timeline for the court’s ruling remains uncertain, and should China’s ByteDance continue to decline to divest TikTok to a U.S. company, it risks facing a total ban across the country.
What will change about the user experience?
The approximately 115 million monthly active TikTok users in the U.S. could encounter various outcomes based on when the Supreme Court reaches a verdict.
If no announcement is made before the legislation takes effect on January 19 and the ban is implemented, it’s feasible that users could continue to post or interact with the app if they already have it installed. Nevertheless, those users would probably face restrictions on updating or reinstalling the app after that date, according to several legal analysts.
Countless short-form video creators who earn revenue from TikTok via advertising income, sponsorships, merchandise, and more will likely need to shift their businesses to alternate platforms, such as YouTube or Instagram.
“Temporarily disabling TikTok, even for a single day, would have significant implications, not just for content creators on TikTok, but also for everyone who consumes or shares content,” stated George Wang, an attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, who participated in drafting the institute’s amicus briefs regarding the case.
“The situation establishes an extremely troubling precedent for how we oversee expression online,” Wang remarked.
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