The law states that it will be “illegal” for entities to “distribute, maintain or update” the application, including its source code, or to “provide services” that allow it to continue to function as is. she is currently. Such distribution, maintenance, or updates could be accomplished, by law, through mobile application stores accessible in the United States or by “providing Internet hosting services.”
“The law deliberately avoided saying it was illegal to have the app on your phone,” says Milton Mueller, professor and co-founder of the Internet Governance Project at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who filed a complaint. 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 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 United States, it will not be possible to directly install new updates that will add new features, fix bugs in the code or will close security vulnerabilities. Over time, this means 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 takes effect.
The other goal of the law is to prevent “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 states. Since the summer of 2022, as TikTok faced pressure over its Chinese stake, the company has hosted US user data in Oracle cloud services. Oracle also did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
However, other systems such as content delivery networks, advertising networks, payment providers, etc. are used as part of TikTok’s infrastructure. The law does not specifically mention these services, but different legal readings could lead one to question whether they help “maintain” or “distribute” TikTok’s fully functional service.
Hall says a recent test of TikTok’s website showed 185 domains embedded on the page. “They pull code, content from a whole range of third-party providers as well as their own domains,” he says. “Applications will start to degrade and rot as services stop working, like content delivery networks or services that feel like they can’t take the risks that come with the ambiguous nature of the language or its potential application by the new administration.”
There is one player in 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 access to entire websites through web browsers. Mueller believes this omission by US lawmakers was likely deliberate, as it avoids setting up 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.
Avoiding a TikTok ban
Even though TikTok’s service in the United States is likely to deteriorate over time, there remain potential ways to circumvent any ban, both for individuals and potentially also for the company itself. The effectiveness of these measures likely depends 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 supports the law but says it is “the best of a series of bad options” related to TikTok. “This law will not stop every single one of them from accessing TikTok. I don’t think that was ever the purpose of the law. The law aims to make access to TikTok significantly more difficult.
