TikTok to be banned in the US

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The government had already planned to ban the app, however, a hearing had been underway today to decide its fate (17 January).

As reported by the BBC, a decision was to be made on the basis of fears for national security.

The app is owned by Chinese company ByteDance and will be banned within days.

There still remains hope the app could be saved as the government have declared that if ByteDance sell the platform by 19 January it can stay.

The social media giant previously had hoped a federal appeals court would agree with its argument that the law was unconstitutional because it represented a "staggering" impact on the free speech of its 170 million US users.

ByteDance have previously said that the law used to ban TikTok was "carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People's Republic of China)."

The app will be banned or must be sold before 19 January, the day before the inauguration of President Trump.

The company hope that Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 US Presidential Election will provide a lifeline for the app.

President Joe Biden has said he will not enforce the ban for the few remaining hours he is in office, leaving it up to Donald Trump to decide what to do when he enters the White House on Monday.

Though Trump unsuccessfully attempted to ban the app in his first term as president in 2020, he said in the run-up to this election that he would not allow the app to be banned.

Trump will be inaugurated on 20 January, the day after the law says TikTok must be banned or sold.

Those who use the app have criticised the decision to uphold the ban.

Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at eMarketer, told the BBC there would be 'major upheaval' if a TikTok appeal were to fail at the Supreme Court and a ban was enforced.

She said this would be 'benefitting Meta, YouTube and Snap, while hurting content creators and small businesses that rely on the app to make a living.'