How the US TikTok Ban Would Really Work

The law says it will be “unlawful” for entities to “distribute, maintain or update” the app including its source code, or “provide services” that allow it to continue as it is now. This distribution, maintenance or updates could be, the law says, through mobile app stores that can be accessed in the United States or “providing Internet hosting services.”

“The law really deliberately avoided saying it was 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 introduced one amicus brief to the Supreme Court as opposed 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 for those stores,” says Mueller. “There’s nothing in the law that says ‘TikTok you have to block US users,’ which is again interesting.”

If TikTok is removed from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store in the United States, it will not be possible to directly install new updates that add new features, correct bugs in the code, or cancel 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 will do if the law goes into effect.

The other focus of the law is to stop “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. Since the summer of 2022, as TikTok has faced pressure on its Chinese ownership, the company has hosted US user data in Oracle’s cloud services. Oracle has not yet responded to WIRED’s request for comment.

Even so, other systems such as content delivery networks, advertising networks, payment providers, and more are used as part of TikTok’s infrastructure. The law does not specifically mention these services, but different legal readings could question whether they help to “maintain” or “distribute” the fully functioning service of TikTok.

Hall says a recent test of the TikTok website showed 185 domains embedded on the page. “They pull the code, the content from that series of third-party providers and even their domains,” he says. “Applications will begin to decay and may as services stop working, things like content distribution networks or services that feel they cannot take the risks of the ambiguous nature of the language or the potential application by the incoming administration.”

There is one actor of the Internet infrastructure that the ban does not specifically put pressure on: Internet service providers. Countries like Russia and China have developed censorship measures that allow them to block entire websites from being accessed through web bowsers. Mueller believes that 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 obviously be a form of First Amendment restriction,” he says.

Avoid a TikTok Ban

While TikTok’s service in the United States could be degraded over time, there are still some potential ways around any ban – both for individuals and potentially even the company itself. The effectiveness of these measures will probably depend on how motivated people are to continue using TikTok and what the company decides to do.

“TikTok has 170 million users,” says Alan Rozenshtein, an associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota, who is in favor of the law but says it’s “the best of a bunch of bad options” in relation to to TikTok. “This law does not prevent everyone from accessing TikTok. I don’t think that was ever the purpose of the law. The law is to make it significantly more difficult to access TikTok.”