House members are telling Apple and Google to be prepared to comply with a law that could result in TikTok facing an effective ban in the U.S.

Summary

House Committee members urged Apple and Google CEOs to prepare for compliance with a law potentially banning TikTok in the U.S. next month.

This follows a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling upholding a law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok by Jan. 19 to address national security concerns. Without divestiture, app stores must block TikTok.

TikTok has filed an emergency injunction, citing harm to businesses and creators, while arguing the law is unconstitutional.

Trump’s stance on enforcing the ban remains unclear, amid reports of his ties to TikTok investor Jeff Yass.

  • @[email protected]English
    1•1 hour ago

    Cool, now to move on to all other repositories of vertical videos and short-form brainrot.

  • @Brkdncr
    3•3 hours ago

    Replies aren’t thinking scale.

    Making the app just difficult enough to access to be annoying is a death sentence. Sure maybe 100k ppl still find a way to use it but those are small numbers.

  • @[email protected]English
    32•14 hours ago

    This will help spread awareness that there are other sources for apps when people start asking where they can download tictok.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•8 hours ago

      It also has a web client.

      I would assume they also plan on shutting down US servers. If they move all the content and host it outside the US, I’m not sure what the government’s next step would be. Wonder if we’re going to build the next great firewall of China in the US.

    • @foggy
      -5•14 hours ago

      If I could buy stock in fdroid rn…

        • @[email protected]
          0•6 hours ago

          Bytedance will likely start opening up enough to allow people to develop readers.

          I dont think they intend to shrink their sphere of influence.

  • @cm0002
    8•13 hours ago

    …is that it? That’s their whole fucking plan to actually enforce that asinine law‽

    LMAO I gotta order some more popcorn

    • Buelldozer
      11•11 hours ago

      It’s all that’s needed. Social Media lives and dies by the network effect so as popular creators get forced off or choose to leave the platform the content consumers will also leave.

      Beyond that very few users of any service or platform will expend the time and effort trying to install an app from alternate sources so as devices die or get reset those users will disappear. As an example back in 2013 Flappy Bird was stupid popular but once you couldn’t install it directly from a regular app store anymore it died off.

      TT is 12 months from death in the United States. I hope Bluesky is ready for them.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•7 hours ago

        I donno, one would argue the FOMO would cause even more americans to flock to tictok once it’s “banned”. The primary demographic is younger people, who are smart enough to find a way.