This Sunday, 170 million TikTok users in the US have seen it “turn off.” Morning Express has consulted sources from the company that has officially chosen not to answer questions from the press about its future, neither in the United States nor abroad.
The US passed a law in April that meant that if TikTok did not cut its ties with its parent company, the Chinese company Bytedance, it had to leave. The steps the company has taken to buy time by taking the case to the Supreme Court and reaching out to Donald Trump have had no effect. The US considers Chinese control of the app a danger to its national security. It is not only a question of data, but also of influence in the case of, for example, a conflict: 60% of Americans between 13 and 29 years old use TikTok regularly and it is the platform that has grown the most as a source of information since 2020 , especially for young people.
Bytedance, and presumably, therefore, the Chinese Government, would thus have access to details of millions of Americans and could decide what type of information is seen more or less in the app. TikTok denies that Bytedance has this power. But now it matters little. American TikTok users will have to migrate their attention and audiences to Reels, from Meta, or Shorts, from Google, or try their luck with other platforms of Chinese origin such as RedNote (Xiaohonghsu in Chinese) or Lemon8. TikTok can be used with VPN (services that allow you to simulate internet access from another country), but it will be a much smaller network and, therefore, of less interest. It is actually difficult to foresee the impact of such a change.
While this is happening in the US, the most important thing for those living abroad is whether it will have consequences for their use of TikTok. Morning Express has consulted a handful of experts to try to answer the main questions.
What will happen if I use TikTok outside the US?
Nothing. TikTok will continue to work the same. “I don’t see any immediate impact, other than that US users’ content will be less visible,” says Professor Oskar Gstrein at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
It is possible that accounts with more resources can continue broadcasting content on TikTok about the NBA or Beyoncé from another country, but banal TikToks from American creators about decoration or cooking will disappear. English content will lose its main power.
Will my country ban TikTok?
Yes, but I could before. India did it in June 2020 and its 200 million users looked for alternatives. The US was already on the verge of banning TikTok in 2020. Many European countries, as well as the European Commission and the Council, also already have a ban for officials on their work phones.
These types of bans have occurred with other networks: Brazil banned X, which has now returned, with a huge number of users and nothing happened. Or one of the big reasons behind the US decision: China does not allow any of the large US networks in its country.
Will the European Union take any action taking advantage of this decision?
“It’s very unlikely,” says Gstrein. The European Union has its regulations and rules to pressure or fine TikTok or other social networks. American motives should not affect European policymakers. It’s something they actually could have done already.
The European Commission uses various legal and regulatory measures to manage TikTok. “The EU has primarily attempted to challenge the dominance of US platforms (for example, through the Digital Services Act), rather than focusing specifically on banning Chinese platforms, with the aim of promoting and protecting technological sovereignty,” he writes. Ausma Bernot, professor at Griffith University (Australia) in a recent report on TikTok and global influence.
The EU’s alternative is to protect its citizens and digital markets rather than specifically attacking platforms linked to geopolitically non-allied governments.
Is my data at risk from using TikTok?
Ordinary users should fear the same thing from Bytedance as they do from Meta: “For users it is not really a security issue, but rather a data protection and profiling issue,” says Gstrein. “These apps collect a lot of information about how we use them. They know what we want, what we think about, what we find interesting, what our opinions are.”
For those who want to avoid that, there are more decentralized alternatives. In 2020, the debate about the danger of TikTok was the same and the answers about the risks were just as difficult. An individual and rare way to use that information would be to obtain confidential information and blackmail, but there are few citizens with whom such a thing will be possible.
“The key word is trust,” says Lianrui Jia, a professor at the University of Sheffield (UK). “Many users, especially young people, question the motives given by the US government, but are also wary of geopolitical counterarguments. “It is a good time to reflect on the rights and protection of users, beyond large digital corporations, regardless of their nationality.”
How important is it to TikTok?
It is very important. It loses one of its large markets (only in Indonesia does it have more users) and the leading world power. But life goes on. The alternatives to TikTok are already created and creating something from scratch seems remote.
Trump’s new friend, Mark Zuckerberg, is the one who will benefit the most, with his Instagram Reels. The American teenagers who were the TikTok generation will suddenly be something else, and it’s hard to know which one. The majority will opt for similar platforms, hence the hope for Instagram, although everything will be even more disintegrated.
“It can be very negative in the short term, but, if we look at the case of Huawei and how the Google Play Store ban affected its mobile business in the West, there is life after such a drastic end,” says Gstrein.
What does this mean for the internet?
Above all, more disintegration. Not only about networks, but also about content. Now it is easy to see trends in the US on TikTok from Latin America or other countries. But with the block, a regular Mexican TikTok user will have to go to Instagram to watch American videos. The influence of the United States abroad will necessarily also be less.
