It appears there are a number of people working to try to keep TikTok from going dark in the U.S. Sunday, including Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, who spoke on the Senate floor earlier this week and urged lawmakers to delay the ban 270 days.
“The intelligence community has not provided any evidence of imminent compromise of this information. What is imminent is a shutdown for 170 million Americans,” Markey said.
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It was Congress that passed a law last year saying that TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, had to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company or face a ban in the United States as of Jan. 19, citing national security concerns.
While many politicians were initially onboard with that ultimatum, they've seemed to change their tune now that deadline day is almost here and ByteDance hasn’t sold.
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NBC News is now reporting that the Biden administration is “exploring options” for how to implement a law so the ban does not go into effect on Jan. 19 as scheduled. That essentially defers the issue to President-Elect Donald Trump, whose popularity on the app has led him to change his position on the ban.
In fact, the chief executive of TikTok plans to attend Trump’s inauguration Monday, sitting in a position of honor.
"In order to exercise deference to the national security interests, it might be advisable to allow the ban to take effect and then have a more holistic review of the app under the incoming president’s administration,” said Professor Maurice Dyson, of Suffolk University Law School.
The Supreme Court is set to rule on the law in the coming days.
In the meantime, the 170 million Americans who use the app are left in limbo, including roughly 7 million who make a living off TikTok. Some have already started exploring other social media options, like RedNote – another Chinese-based platform that’s very similar to TikTok.
Influencers like Massachusetts native Amanda Gallant say they just want to know TikTok’s fate so they can move forward.
“Honestly I am just so tired of this waiting game," she said. "This is my career, it’s so many others' careers. So many people make their money from TikTok, and it just feels like, are they taking it away or not? Rip the Band-Aid off if they’re going to take it.”
If the ban goes into effect Sunday, there’s conflicting reports over whether Americans just won’t be able to download the app or whether it will cease to function in the U.S.