TikTok, US president signs the law to ban it: is this the end of the well-known social network?

The social network TikTok it may soon be permanently banned give it United States of America. President John Biden has in fact signed a law that could send him offline on US territory, if some very heavy conditions are not accepted.

Halter conditions

The law asks to ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell it if it wants it to remain available in the United States. The sale must take place within 270 days, i.e. approximately nine months.

ByteDance itself does not seem to be willing to give in and has announced battle: “The TikTok ban is an unconstitutional law and we will challenge it in court. We believe that the facts and the law are clearly in our favor, and in the end we will prevail. We have invested billions of dollars to keep US data secure and our platform free from external influence and manipulation.

This ban would devastate seven million businesses and silence 170 million Americans. As we continue to challenge this unconstitutional ban, we will continue to invest and innovate to ensure that TikTok remains a space where Americans of all backgrounds can safely come to share their experiences, find joy and inspiration.”

The war between TikTok and the US government goes back a long way. The official reasons speak of risks to user data due to the Chinese government's influence on the platform. Already in 2020 theTrump administration had tried to ban it from the USA, speaking of national security risks and claiming that the app could be used to collect sensitive data from American users by the Chinese government.

In reality there are also those who speak of the US government's desire to eliminate the main competitor of local companies such as Meta and Microsoft, resorting to legal action, considering that, despite some direct accusations, the use of the data has not yet been proven of TikTok by the Chinese government (where, however, the use of data collected by Facebook to influence electoral campaigns has been demonstrated in the past).

The risk for TikTok, if the US ban becomes operational, is that it will also be banned in other territories such as Europe, which could quickly follow the decision.