Should you just keep using TikTok as though nothing happened?
I’m not sure that we’ve ever been in a situation quite like this other than Prohibition. A product that’s used by roughly half of Americans is essentially illegal as it currently exists (or will be soon).
Sure, other products exist in a legal gray area. Most e-cigarettes and weed that Americans buy are not approved by the government or are downright against the law. Some of you with tinted car windows are breaking the law.
With TikTok, though, you are now in a surreal moment in which the federal government says TikTok is a menace to Americans and to the country’s national security, but it’s also not telling you to dump the app.
“We’re not saying that we do not want Americans to use TikTok,” the White House press secretary said Wednesday, just after the president signed a law declaring that TikTok cannot exist in its current form in the United States.
Whether you or your children use TikTok is now a personal choice.
I imagine that most people will keep using (or not using) TikTok just the way they did before. Except now you face the looming risk that the app could disappear sometime months or years from now.
The White House says it wants TikTok to sell to a non-Chinese owner instead of being banned in the United States.
Will a sale happen and to whom? (Insert shrug emoji.)
TikTok said it will challenge the new law in court. Maybe in the next few months (or years), courts will declare the TikTok forced sale or ban unconstitutional. Maybe they’ll say it’s constitutionally kosher.
Maybe the legal case will take years to resolve. TikTok and people who use the app will remain in limbo the entire time.
Maybe Donald Trump will be elected president later this year and will try to stop a forced sale or ban of TikTok.
Maybe some rich dude or Walmart will sweep in to lead a purchase of TikTok — with or without the secret computer code that tailors videos to each person’s tastes.
Maybe China’s government will try to stop that from happening.
Maybe Earth will get clobbered by a giant asteroid.
What happens next with TikTok is unpredictable. Don’t trust anyone who confidently predicts what’s going to happen.
Will the government try to ban other popular technologies from China?
American officials haven’t made public specific evidence of why they believe TikTok poses such a dire threat of Chinese data harvesting and propaganda.
They also haven’t told you how much you should or shouldn’t worry about other technologies from China.
Is it safe for you to shop on Shein and Temu, two widely used apps that originated from China?
Is it risky for you to own a computer from Chinese company Lenovo or a Motorola smartphone also from Lenovo? Should your kid keep playing the video game “League of Legends,” which is controlled by Chinese tech giant Tencent?
Is it okay that nearly all our smartphones and other electronics are made in Chinese factories?
Will the government keep out electric cars or smartphones from Chinese brands that are affordable and popular in some countries other than the United States?
TikTok may be a unique risk, given how many Americans use the app and get information and news from an app controlled by a Chinese company.
But again, American officials haven’t been upfront with you about where the line might be between dangerous and acceptable technologies from China.
