The State of the Social Media TikTok Crisis: An Outburst of the First Amendment and its Implications for Users and the U.S.

For the first time in internet history, the United States government has officially banned a major global social media platform, joining the ranks of authoritarian regimes like Russia and China. TikTok went dark on Saturday. Users who attempt to access the app are now greeted with a message that says “TikTok isn’t available right now.”

Instead, the law puts pressure on Apple and Google to delete TikTok from their app stores, or risk accumulating millions of dollars in fines. ByteDance, the parent company of Tik Tok, seemed to have removed its apps from both companies as of Saturday. Google and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“It’s a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” says Evelyn Douek, a professor at Stanford Law School who specializes in online speech issues. “Unfortunately for me, all nine of the Supreme Court justices disagree, and pretty much everyone that matters is going to listen to their opinion over mine. It’s hard to take the national security justification seriously, though, when in recent days presidents past and future as well as members of Congress seem to be backpedaling on whether an immediate shutdown is necessary after all.”

The law would be left up to the Incoming Trump administration, as President Biden indicated with days to go until the deadline. The move left the app’s fate in limbo, and TikTok urged the Biden administration Saturday to provide definitive assurance that it wouldn’t enforce the law. In response, Biden’s team suggested TikTok raise its concerns with Trump.

On Blind, an anonymous messaging app popular with tech workers, some TikTok employees spiraled about whether they’d have jobs next month, while others went about business as usual. One user wrote that their manager was still scheduling meetings for next week without acknowledging the ban. “I have 2025 strategy meetings next week,” another user responded. I’m doing what I’m told. It’s comforting.

PAFACA does not want to put pressure on TikTok by requiring app stores and cloud hosting services to stop doing anything that can be used to update or reduce TikTok. That puts the pressure on Apple and Google to stop new users from downloading TikTok, as well as infrastructure providers like Oracle to keep new content or software updates from reaching the app’s users. TikTok would probably degrade and become useless over time.

Devashish Gosain, a network analysis researcher and assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, says that in India, TikTok users must remove their Indian SIM card from their phone or use an international SIM card and then run a VPN in order to load content in the app.