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 working as it does now. This distribution, maintenance or updates can be, the law says, through US-accessible mobile app stores or “providing Internet hosting services.”
“The law really deliberately avoided saying it’s illegal to have an 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 in 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,” says Mueller. “There’s nothing in the law that says ‘TikTok you have to block 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 code bugs, or reverse 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.
Another focus of the law is 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. Since the summer of 2022, as TikTok has faced pressure over its Chinese ownership, the company has hosted US customer data within Oracle’s 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 different legal interpretations could lead them to question whether they help “maintain” or “distribute” TikTok’s fully functional service.
Hall says a recent test of TikTok’s website showed 185 embedded domains on the site. “They’re pulling in code, content from that array of third-party vendors and their own domains,” he says. “Apps will start to fail and rot as services go out of business, things like content distribution networks or services that feel they can’t take the risks of the ambiguous nature of the language or potential enforcement by the new administration.”
There is one player in the Internet infrastructure that is not particularly pressured by the ban: Internet service providers. Countries like Russia and China have developed censorship measures that allow them to block access to entire websites through web browsers. Mueller believes this omission by US lawmakers was likely intentional, as it avoids setting up a Chinese-style internet firewall. “They knew that an ISP-based system of blocking and filtering would clearly be a form of First Amendment restriction,” he says.
Avoiding TikTok Ban
While TikTok’s service in the US would likely degrade over time, there are some potential ways around any ban – both for individuals and potentially for the company itself. How effective these measures would likely be depends on how motivated people are to continue using TikTok and what the company decides to do.
“TikTok has 170 million users,” said Alan Rozenshtein, an associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota, who is in favor of the bill but says it’s “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 ever the intent of the law. The law significantly complicates access to TikTok.”