Why is TikTok in the U.S.? Implications for the First Amendment and the Trump Administration with a Senate Shutdown
TikTok is no longer available in the United States—at least for now. But it’s not the only ByteDance-owned app that’s currently blocked for US-based users.
A federal law passed last year banned applications owned by ByteDance from being in the US on national security grounds. ByteDance must sell TikTok and other apps to a non-China entity by Sunday in response to Chinese laws that demand China-based companies provide their data to the Chinese government and intelligence agencies.
It has to be seen as a blatant violation of the First Amendment. “Unfortunately for me, all nine of the Supreme Court justices disagree, and pretty much everyone that matters is going to listen to their opinion over mine. It’s hard to see how the national security rationale can be thought of seriously when members of congress seem to be changing their minds on whether a shutdown is needed at all.
With days to go until the deadline, President Biden signaled that he’d leave enforcement of the law up to the incoming Trump administration. The move left the app’s fate in limbo, and TikTok urged the Biden administration Saturday to provide definitive assurance that it wouldn’t enforce the law. In response, Biden’s team suggested TikTok raise its concerns with Trump.
TikTok employees were uncertain about their jobs next month on Blind, a messaging app popular with tech workers. One user wrote that anyone else’smanager still scheduling meetings about new upcoming projects without acknowledging the ban. “I have 2025 strategy meetings next week,” another user responded. I am doing what I’m told. It is comforting in a way.
Upcoming U.S. ByteDance Apps Are Gone Too: How Lemon8 Has Helped Students Learn to Take Pictures of Their Homework
PAFACA does not require ByteDance to block US-based users of its apps. Instead, it prohibits any US company from providing any service to “distribute, maintain or update” ByteDance-owned apps. Many of these apps have been removed from Apple and/or Google’s app stores. That may change soon after Donald Trump takes office on Monday, however, with the US president-elect indicating that he plans to extend the deadline for a sale of TikTok by 90 days. It’s very confusing.
TikTok allows vertical videos to beposted on CapCut, a free video-editing tool. It is often the app of choice for amateur creators, due to its professional features. Some creators use CapCut to produce videos before uploading them to other platforms.
ByteDance released Lemon8 as a social media app. It is known for resembling RedNote, a particularly successful social media app in China that has also become the destination for many TikTok users in exile this week. The app went offline, but some users decided to migrate to Lemon8.
With Gauth, students can take pictures of their homework, and the app will use artificial intelligence to understand the problem and provide step-by-step solutions. There are other features that help students be more productive. According to the app’s shutdown announcement this weekend, it has “helped 300 million users with billions of questions.”
ByteDance, Land of Empires, and Mission EVO: Some apps that are not supported in the United States by a merger
Updated 9 am EST, January 19, 2025: Added the games Marvel Snap, Land of Empires, and Mission EVO to the list of apps unavailable in the US as a result of the ban on ByteDance-owned properties.
The new photo-editing tool, with a heavy focus on generativeAI tools, is called Hypic. Users can use it to improve photo quality or turn a picture into a cartoon.
There is a communications app called Lark. Originally created for ByteDance’s own internal messages among employees, it has now become one of the most-used office communications apps in China, with several million active users.
Several apps that allow users to watch short vertical dramas or read online fiction novels are published by a Singapore subsidiary of ByteDance. My Topia Books is one of the only apps that still supports US users despite the fact that it ended its support for them.
Tokopedia is one of Indonesia’s largest ecommerce platforms. ByteDance acquired it and merged it with TikTok Shop, which was banned in the country due to the need to protect smaller merchants and users’ data.