Earlier this year, President Joe Biden signed a law that threatened to completely ban the popular video social media app TikTok if its Chinese-tied parent company did not sell it.
Despite the deadline for shutdown being only months away, reports indicate the company is going about business as usual without concern for this major threat.
TikTok Ban
Back in April, Biden signed into law legislation that would lead to a nationwide ban of TikTok over concerns it constituted a national security threat by the Chinese government.
“Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel,” said Democrat Senator Maria Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee earlier this year.
What Did the Law Do?
The law set a deadline of January 25, 2025 for the parent company ByteDance to sell its control of Tiktok, otherwise, it would become illegal for web-hosting platforms to support the app in the United States.
Google and Apple would also be forced to remove TikTok from their app stores, essentially making TikTok unusable for its millions of American users.
Fighting the Ban
Despite the weight of the American government against them, TikTok was defiant, confident that this law would be overturned in the court system.
“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said. “The facts and the Constitution are on our side and we expect to prevail again.”
Legal Struggles
However, this confidence from TikTok has not translated into any court wins. The company has filed suit to block the law, but so far has not succeeded.
Oral arguments will be heard in a federal appeals court on September 16, and TikTok has already hired leading US Supreme Court lawyers, possibly anticipating a difficult fight.
Not Concerned
However, despite TikTok fighting vigorously for its life in court and the approaching deadline, a new report by The Information reveals that employees are going about things business as usual.
TikTok employees are implementing ad buys, chasing engagement metrics, planning future events for TikTok influencers, and pushing to hire thousands of more workers.
Court Confidence
The Information reports that TikTok executives are extremely confident that they will be able to put a stop to the government law, or at least delay its implementation by “a half year or even longer.”
“Company leaders also believe there is a possibility for TikTok to negotiate a solution with the next presidential administration, but they are waiting until after the US election in November,” said the report.
Here to Stay
It isn’t just TikTok itself that seems unconcerned, a report by Business Insider documents how ad buyers generally aren’t worried about their positions with the company.
“TikTok employees aren’t the only ones acting like they’re not going anywhere. When I was at the Cannes advertising festival in June, I kept asking ad buyers what their fallback positions would be if TikTok went away in a few months. I got a series of shrugs in response. Not because they didn’t care, but because it didn’t seem likely,” wrote Peter Kafka in a September 10 Business Insider piece.
Political Context
Despite prominent members of both political parties expressing wariness of the app’s connection to the US adversary China, the presidential campaigns of Republicans and Democrats are embracing the app as an election strategy.
Trump and Harris’ campaigns have an outsized presence on TikTok, along with proxy accounts spreading campaign messaging and engaging with the app’s culture.
American Sentiment Changes
While large political figures embrace TikTok despite warning of its dangers, American sentiment has shifted favorably towards the app.
In 2023, around half of Americans supported a TikTok ban, a figure that Pew Research said has decreased to only a third of Americans in recent times.
Shocking Contrast
Ben Smith of Semafour observed in June this weird complacency taking hold in the wake of the rare bipartisan push to ban the app.
“The complacency over TikTok at Cannes was a shocking contrast with the seriousness in Washington about killing or forcing the sale of the app,” said Smith.
Nobody Talking About It
While the ban on TikTok looms large just over the horizon, the possibility of the app being shuttered is strangely absent from the current political conversation.
One of the country’s most widely used social media platforms may just shortly disappear into thin air, but everyone from users to the company itself seems to be going about things business as usual.
