“Sociable” is the latest commentary on necessary social media developments and trends from industry expert Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today.
So at this stage, it appears that evidently TikTok will go dark in the U.S., a minimum of for some time period.
On Friday afternoon, following the news that Supreme Court would uphold a bill stipulating TikTok be sold in the U.S., the app’s owners shared the following update:
“The statements issued today by each the Biden White House and the Department of Justice have failed to supply the obligatory clarity and assurance to the service providers which can be integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans. Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most crucial service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok shall be forced to go dark on January 19.”
The key sticking point here is that while the White House has said that it can not implement the TikTok ban on Sunday, giving the incoming Trump administration a chance to review and enact as they see fit, the technical wording of the bill holds the app facilitators (i.e. Apple and Google) responsible, and will open them as much as fines in the event that they proceed to support TikTok after the official date.
If nothing else, the TikTok saga in the U.S. has definitely maintained a healthy sense of drama.
As expected, the Supreme Court announced that it can uphold the ruling of the Senate-approved Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which rules that TikTok, and other apps owned by Chinese corporations operating in the U.S. (with greater than 1,000,000 U.S. users), have to either be sold into U.S.-ownership, or stop operating in the nation.
That signifies that TikTok shall be shut down in the U.S. on Sunday, leaving 170 million U.S.-based TikTok users to search out another approach to spend their time.
Right?
Well, perhaps not.
The TikTok ban is now subject to latest political wrangling, with outgoing President Joe Biden apparently seeking to alleviate his responsibility for enforcing the bill, and incoming commander-in-chief Donald Trump pledging to avoid wasting the app for American users.
And it sure looks like TikTok, at the least, believes that Trump has a plan.
That’s TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who shall be in attendance for Trump’s inauguration next week, putting his faith in Trump to search out an answer “that keeps TikTok available in the United States.”
So what can Trump do, exactly?
Well, as noted, if the Biden administration doesn’t implement the bill, and force the respective app stores to de-list TikTok on Sunday, that would mean that doing so will carry over to Trump once he’s inaugurated early next week. Technically, that’s not the way it should work, but again, reports have suggested that that is seemingly what Biden’s team is planning on doing, in order to side-step the issue.
Legal experts have suggested that, once inaugurated, Trump could issue an executive order that will direct agencies to not implement the TikTok ban, effectively nullifying the approved bill, though that will also mean contravening the Senate-approved bill, and undermining the previous ruling.
That could cause tensions between Trump and other senators. But however, there’s already lots of tension there, so…
For his part, Trump says that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, and the two discussed TikTok, amongst other concerns.
He’s also said that he’s reviewing the situation:
So what does that mean for U.S. TikTokers, and the prospects for the app moving forward?
Well, despite the legal ruling, TikTok won’t go dark and will proceed on unimpeded after Sunday. But the app is also shut down for a period, giving Trump more time to barter another that meets the demands of the approved bill.
I might suspect that the latter is more likely, going by the rule of law, but it appears that evidently either stays a possibility.
We’ll discover soon enough.
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