Congress rapidly passed and President Biden signed into law a bill intended to sideline the short-form video service TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance. The process played out over the course of a week — the result of the proposal being tied to a foreign aid package with support for Ukraine and Israel. The nation now readies for the aftermath of the new U.S. law, which gives ByteDance nine months to find a new, U.S.-approved owner. Absent that, the app will essentially be banned from app stores and ISPs, which will face fines for distributing or supporting the social platform.

“That would effectively restrict new downloads of the app and interaction with its content,” writes CNN, which says the deadline for a sale is January 19, 2025, but that the legislation allows Biden to “extend the deadline another 90 days if he determines the company’s made progress toward a sale, giving TikTok potentially up to a year before facing a ban.”

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew posted a video to the platform telling users, “Rest assured: we aren’t going anywhere,” elaborating that “we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts.”

“In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson called the law ‘unconstitutional’ and said it ‘would devastate’ the platform’s 170 million U.S. users and 7 million businesses that operate on the app,” CNN reports.

The fact that China is defined as a “foreign adversary” under Title 10 of the United States Code 4872(d)(2) complicates what would otherwise be a straightforward argument by TikTok.

U.S. officials have taken the position that TikTok poses a national security threat due to Chinese laws that allow that government to demand that ByteDance share any data it wants, including the data of U.S. app users. “Some lawmakers have also worried that the Chinese government could influence what types of messages U.S. users see,” says The Verge.

Variety reports that “the TikTok divest-or-ban legislation has been opposed by the ACLU and other advocacy groups.”

For now, fans “can continue using the app as before,” though “if TikTok can’t separate from ByteDance by the deadline, then U.S. TikTok users could hypothetically be cut off by mid-January,” per CNN, contextualizing “that is still a big ‘if.’”

Related:
‘Thunder Run’: Behind Lawmakers’ Secretive Push to Pass the TikTok Bill, The New York Times, 4/24/24
What Banning TikTok in the U.S. Would Look Like (Video), The Wall Street Journal, 4/24/24
TikTok Isn’t Going Away – at Least Not Yet. Here’s What to Know, The Wall Street Journal, 4/23/24
On TikTok, Resignation and Frustration After Potential Ban of App, The New York Times, 4/24/24
How TikTok Rivals Stand to Benefit from U.S. Ban, The Wall Street Journal, 4/24/24
TikTok Ultimatum Makes U.S. Firms a Target for China Retaliation, Bloomberg, 4/24/24
TikTok Lite Axes ‘Addictive as Cigarettes’ Reward-to-Watch Feature Under the EU’s Watchful Eye, Engadget, 4/24/24