Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Popular social media platform TikTok is set to be banned in the United States on Sunday, Jan. 19, over national security concerns.
The only way the app will be saved is if TikTok’s parent company ByteDance agrees to sell. ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese multinational technology company headquartered in Beijing.
The law, H.R.7521, was passed in order to safeguard U.S. national security from threats posed by applications controlled by foreign adversaries, such as TikTok. According to the U.S. government, TikTok could be used as a spy tool by China.
This law has seen a push back from the over 170 million users in the U.S. Famous TikTok food reviewer Keith Lee said that the app changed his life. Lee went viral after posting food critics on TikTok, helping hundreds of struggling restaurants increase their sales.
Many small businesses and content creators fear they will have to rebuild. In a study posted by Tiktok, the company suggested that SMB’s use of the app contributed about $24 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023.
However, for other users, like Brenau University student Xavier Bosso, the ban on TikTok does not affect him, despite having over 64 thousand followers.
“I personally would not be losing something extremely important to me that sustains my life like other people who make their living from Tiktok. I started making videos on tiktok for fun and I would be sad if 6 years of videos were lost in nothing,” he said.
There may be hope yet as President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday, Jan. 18, that he would “most likely” give TikTok 90 days after he takes office on Monday.
“I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at. The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate,” he told NBC News in an interview. “We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation.”
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