On the morning of Sunday January 19, 2025 the company ByteDance blocked all users within the United States from accessing any services owned by itself or its subsidiaries. The respective applications were also removed from the major US app stores. TikTok is the most significant of these apps by far, but many others were also affected.

Fourteen hours later TikTok is unblocked. The other apps are slowly coming back online. ByteDance appears satisfied with Trump’s promise that they will find a solution and not suffer any consequences. This is particularly funny because Trump is largely responsible for the ban in the first place¹.

The Law

The legislation which effectively bans TikTok is called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act². Any company that hosts or helps distribute apps that fall under its purview face massive civil penalties.

ByteDance and TikTok are specifically named in the law as foreign adversaries. The law applies to them no matter what. The law also applies to other apps which meet certain conditions. They must be social media apps with at least a million users, owned and operated by foreign adversaries, and designated by the President as a threat to national security.

Implementation

In China all Internet traffic passes through government networks which can simply refuse to route packets to any prohibited service. The United States has no such thing. This ban is the complete opposite. Instead of a country keeping an app out, an app is trying to keep out users from a particular country. That is a much larger technological challenge.

The law does not prescribe a specific mechanism for blocking an app. If TikTok has no US business presence, hosts itself with infrastructure entirely outside of US borders, and no US app store hosts the app, can it remain accessible to US residents? Would a residential ISP be committing a crime if they don’t block the traffic?

Any method I can conceive of for blocking the app is necessarily flawed. There are always going to be false positives and negatives. There will always be workarounds possible using tools like virtual private networking (VPN). I’m particularly curious about edge cases such as people who live in Guam or people that have satellite internet service.

Even with these flaws, I think the ban will still be extremely effective. A simple block based on IP addresses will get the job done. If an app truly exists entirely outside the country with no help from any domestic service providers, it will be basically impossible to get a significant US customer base or revenue stream. Being cut off from payment processing should be enough on its own.

The Politics

This law passed the US House of Representatives with a vote of 352–65. The opposition included fifty Democrats and only fifteen Republicans. The US Senate passed it with a vote of 79–18. How exactly did such a controversial bill get passed with bipartisan support in such a polarized country?

There were, of course, the usual shenanigans. The Republicans in the US House were the ones who most wanted this to become law. They bundled the bill into a foreign aid package that needed to pass swiftly. This pressured all of Congress to forgo debate and vote yes to avoid delays to the essential foreign aid.

Not every congressperson who voted yes was biting their tongue to get the foreign aid through. Many Democrats supported the ban because they sincerely believe that there is a real threat to national security. Some Republicans may also believe that, but they largely supported the bill for other reasons.

Republicans believe, perhaps correctly, that most of the US users of TikTok, and most of its content, lean to the more liberal side of the political spectrum. They also know that banning the app would be very unpopular. Because Joe Biden would be the one to sign the bill into law, they thought they could put the blame on Democrats. It appears to me they were correct, and this plan has succeeded.

The fact that this kind of strategy works is exactly what people are talking about when people say democracy dies in darkness. If more US citizens paid attention to the important nuances of what is happening, they never could have gotten away with it.

Republicans are also motivated to ban TikTok because it is a platform they can not control or influence as easily as others. It isn’t owned by one of their friends like Twitter and Facebook are. The threat of a ban gives them a lever to exert control. We are now seeing TikTok bend over to kiss the ring in hopes of avoiding the shutdown. Being a Chinese company, they have plenty of practice.

Lastly, Republicans hate TikTok purely because it is foreign. When ByteDance succeeds, money leaves the country. Domestic competitors, like Meta, lose money and customers. It is notable that while both ByteDance and Meta have aggressively lobbied Congress, Zuckerberg started tasting the booth leather earlier and with bigger numbers after the dollar sign.

National Security Risk

Is TikTok a threat to national security? Not enough information has been made public for me to feel comfortable making a call either way. Members of US intelligence agencies have indicated they believe it is, but they have not divulged their evidence publicly. Some members of Congress who have been briefed were convinced, and others were not. This becomes a matter of how much faith one puts in our institutions.

Many other countries have banned TikTok from government devices, but have refrained from banning it entirely. Clearly they are concerned with the threats relating to the app collecting information, but not with the possibility of the app disseminating information. Even if there is no indication TikTok is going to be used in that way, it could. That is a threat I believe is not being taken seriously enough.

Imagine the best and most perfect democracy that could possibly exist. The only problem is that a large portion of the populace get their information from media outlets controlled by foreign entities. Even if the foreign countries are all allied nations, this puts this hypothetical democracy in an extremely vulnerable position.

Protecting against outside influence is most critical for ensuring the integrity of elections, but that is not the only threat. Sweden has recently updated their pamphlet In case of crisis or war. It contains a message which says “If Sweden is attacked, we will never surrender. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.” This message was in previous editions of the pamphlet, but has been moved up to the fifth page and highlighted in a bright yellow block. The implications are self-explanatory. Information warfare is real warfare.

Freedom of Speech

I’m not concerned for the free speech rights of TikTok’s users. In their case, XKCD 1357 applies. Private spaces can moderate themselves however they choose. If users do not like the restrictions on speech on one platform, they can go to another platform which suits them better.

However, this ban itself is an action taken by the government. Does that make it a free speech problem? The law applies equally to all apps that meet the criteria. The content published on an app, its moderation policies, or its editorial bias are not part of the criteria. No individual or organization is suffering criminal prosecution because of the ideas they are expressing.

The Supreme Court appears to agree. In TikTok v. Garland³ they unanimously rejected ByteDance’s claim. The court’s opinion states that the law is content-neutral, and the First Amendment rights of TikTok itself were not violated. However, they avoided answering whether the law itself is constitutional. In her concurring opinion Justice Sotomayor expressed her wish that the court would have addressed that larger question.

Capitalists like Milton Friedman worried that the government owning or monopolizing various entities would result in limitations on free speech. How can you print and distribute a newspaper full of anti-establishment opinions when the government owns the printing press and the post office? It’s not hard to see how they developed this concern while looking at the USSR during the Cold War. One could easily draw the same conclusions today by looking at China’s Great Firewall.

This is particularly amusing seeing that freedom is being threatened in the United States not by a government institution, but by foreign and domestic corporations hoping to curry favor with the current administration. What does it matter if the government doesn’t own the press if its owned entirely by obedient oligarchs?

Despite the prognostications of those capitalists we find ourselves with a public postal service that will promptly deliver any preposterous screed as long as enough postage is affixed. It is the private platforms which, by moderation and algorithm, serve as the vehicle for propaganda. The Republicans who cry for freedom, free speech, and deregulation have long sought to destroy the postal service. Now they seek to destroy any internet communications platform that will not serve their interest.

A Way Forward

I have no easy answers for world leaders. What policy can simultaneously allow citizens the freedom of self expression while also protecting from foreign influence? Banning apps is incredibly unpopular. Allowing them to exist puts a powerful weapon in the hands of enemies foreign and domestic.

Thankfully, there are easy answers for citizens like you and I. Retreat to the IndieWeb as soon as possible. The federated architecture, lack of centralized control, and absence of profit motive provide resilience against all of the above concerns. If you’ve been holding on to the major platforms now is the time to leave. There’s no point in investing in something that will either become a cesspit of propaganda or be banned.