The United States Supreme Court has upheld the ruling against TikTok, effectively banning the app on Sunday, January 19th. This judgment was unanimous and swiftly passed, leaving many wondering about the app’s future. The ultimatum was for ByteDance to sell the app or face the ban, and the Supreme Court is showing it is serious in its plans to uphold that ultimatum.
Videos by ComicBook.com
TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms available, allowing over 170 million users to create and upload videos. TikTok quickly became an outlet for sharing news and generating entertaining content. However, there have been issues regarding TikTok, primarily with a focus on how it collects and utilizes user data. As a result, the United States government has been increasingly cracking down on how it views the app, even threatening to ban it outright unless something changes. This discussion has heated up recently, and it appears a decision has finally been made about TikTok.
RELATED: TikTok Suing the U.S. Government Over “Unconstitutional” Ban
The decision is largely in part due to the United States government fearing foreign interest in collecting and using data from TikTok. The government argued ByteDance must sell the app to a US-based company, or face the ban. The law will take place on Sunday, the day before President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
While it appears TikTok will be gone, Trump has made statements regarding his recent fondness for TikTok and hints at plans to save the app. It is unclear what Trump can and will do, but fans are hopeful TikTok can be saved.
In the meantime, many users are migrating from TikTok to another app, RedNote, another Chinese app. There are similar privacy concerns regarding RedNote and its potential to collect users’ data and what might be done with that data. RedNote has quickly shot to be the most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store, almost a 4,900% increase.
The impact of TikTok being banned is already being felt, and it remains to be seen how this affects the future. TikTok was a preferred platform among many of all ages, allowing for the quick of information and viral videos. Come Sunday, this will no longer be the case as the TikTok ban goes into effect.