How would a US TikTok ban actually work?

The law states that it would be “unlawful” for entities to “distribute, maintain or update” the application including its source code, or by “providing services” that allow it to continue operating as it is now. The law provides that such distribution, maintenance, or updates may be done by mobile application stores accessible in the United States or by “the provision of Internet hosting services.”

“The law intentionally avoided saying it’s illegal to have the app on your phone,” says Milton Mueller, a professor and co-founder of the Internet Governance Project at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which filed the lawsuit. Amicus brief to the Supreme Court Opposition to the ban. “Their attempt is to say that no one new can download it from the Apple or Google stores, and no one who has it can update it through those stores,” Mueller says. “There is nothing in the law that says TikTok must ban US users, which again is interesting.”

If TikTok is removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the US, it will not be possible to directly install new updates that will add new features, fix bugs within the code, or eliminate security flaws. Over time, this means that TikTok will stop working properly. Apple did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment, while Google declined to comment on what it would do if the law goes into effect.

The law’s other focus is preventing “host” companies from providing services to TikTok, and the definition is very broad. Hosting companies “may include file hosting, domain name server hosting, cloud hosting, and virtual private server hosting,” the law says. Since the summer of 2022, when TikTok faced pressure over its Chinese ownership, the company has faced this US user data hosted within Oracle cloud services. Oracle also did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

However, other systems such as content delivery networks, advertising networks, payment service providers, and more are used as part of TikTok’s infrastructure. The law doesn’t specifically mention these services, but differing legal readings might make you wonder whether they help “maintain” or “distribute” a fully functioning TikTok service.

A recent test of TikTok showed 185 embedded domains on the page, Hall says. “They pull code and content from that pool of third-party providers and their own domains as well,” he says. “Applications will start to decay and rot when any of the services stop working, such as content distribution networks or services that feel they cannot take the risks of the ambiguous nature of the language or potential implementation by the next administration.”

There is one player in Internet infrastructure that the ban is not particularly pressing for: Internet service providers. Countries such as Russia and China have developed censorship measures that allow them to block access to entire websites by web surfers. Mueller believes this omission by US lawmakers was likely deliberate, as it avoids creating a Chinese-style internet firewall. “They knew that an ISP-based blocking and filtering system would clearly be a form of First Amendment restriction,” he says.

Avoid TikTok ban

Although TikTok’s US service will likely deteriorate over time, there are still some potential ways to get around any ban, both for individuals and for the company itself as well. How effective these measures are depends on how motivated people are to continue using TikTok and what the company decides to do.

“TikTok has 170 million users,” says Alan Rosenstein, an assistant law professor at the University of Minnesota, who supports the law but says it is “the best of a bunch of bad options” related to TikTok. “This law will not prevent every one of them from accessing TikTok. I don’t think that was the intent of the law at all. The law aims to make access to TikTok significantly more difficult.