The law states that it will be “unlawful” to “distribute, maintain or update” the application, including its source code, or “provide services” that will allow it to function in its current state. By law, this distribution, maintenance, or updates may be done through mobile app stores that can be accessed in the US, or by “providing web hosting services.”
“The law really deliberately left out to say that having the app on your phone is illegal,” says Milton Mueller, a professor and co-founder of the Internet Governance Project at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which filed the proposal amicus brief to the Supreme Court in opposition to the ban. “What they’re saying is that no one new can download this app from the Apple or Google stores, and no one who has it can update it through those stores,” Mueller says. “There’s nothing in the law that says, ‘TikTok you have to block US users,’ which is interesting again.”
If TikTok is removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the US, you won’t be able to directly install up-to-date updates that add up-to-date features, fix code errors, or fix security vulnerabilities. Over time, this will mean that TikTok will no longer function 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 also focuses on stopping “hosting” companies from providing services to TikTok – and the definition is quite broad. Hosting companies “may include file hosting, domain name server hosting, cloud hosting, and virtual private server hosting,” the law says. This has been the case since the summer of 2022, when TikTok faced pressure over Chinese ownership hosted US user data on Oracle cloud services. Oracle also did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Still, other systems such as content delivery networks, ad networks, payment providers, and others are used as part of TikTok’s infrastructure. The law doesn’t specifically mention these services, but differing legal interpretations could lead them to question whether they facilitate “maintain” or “distribute” a fully functioning TikTok service.
Hall says a recent test of the TikTok website showed that there were 185 embedded domains on the site. “They get code, content from various third-party providers, as well as their own domains,” he says. “Apps will start to rot and rot when any of the services go down, such as content delivery networks or services that feel they can’t take the risk of the ambiguous nature of the language or the potential for enforcement by the incoming administration.”
There is one internet infrastructure entity that is not under particular pressure from a ban: internet service providers. Countries such as Russia and China have developed censorship measures that allow them to block access to entire websites via Internet Bosers. Mueller believes this omission by U.S. lawmakers was likely intentional because it avoided setting up a Chinese-style firewall. “They knew that an ISP-based blocking and filtering system would obviously be a form of First Amendment restriction,” he says.
Avoiding TikTok Ban
While the quality of TikTok’s service in the US is likely to deteriorate over time, there are some potential ways to circumvent the ban – both for individuals and potentially for the company itself. How effective these measures are will likely depend on how motivated people are to continue using TikTok and the company’s decisions.
“TikTok has 170 million users,” says Alan Rozenshtein, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, who favors the law but says it is “the best of many bad options” with TikTok. “This law will not prevent any of them from accessing TikTok. I don’t think that was ever the purpose of the law. The law is intended to make access to TikTok significantly more difficult.”