Jan 22, 2025
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you, like millions of Americans, are probably well aware of the ban on TikTok in the US. Starting way back in August 2020, President Trump mulled using executive powers to force the sale of TikTok to a US entity. This kicked off a firestorm of debates across the country over the truth of allegations about the Chinese government using the app to spy on Americans, if an app ban was even legal, and what the implications of such a ban would be. However, it all suddenly moved from hypothetical to reality when President Biden signed a bipartisan TikTok ban bill in April of 2024.
Now here we are, having just passed the deadline by which TikTok was supposed to have sold itself or been banned from downloads in the US, and everything is in chaos. TikTok very briefly went offline in the United States from late Saturday night until the afternoon of Sunday. During this time, President Trump promised to temporarily lift the ban for 90 days provided TikTok agreed to sell 50% of its stake to an unspecified US entity. While TikTok has resumed operations, it’s still unclear what will happen to the app with a ban still technically on the books despite a lack of enforcement.
If you’re confused about what the exact implications of the ban are for your business, you’re not alone. The constant dance of “will they or won’t they” promises from both Donald Trump and ByteDance over the past 72 hours have left most of the country completely perplexed about what the future might bring, especially if TikTok ultimately decides they don’t want to sell.
So what does it all mean? How will your business need to adapt in a country potentially without TikTok? And more importantly, what does this mean for businesses reliant on widely used software created by foreign companies going forward? In this guide, Blade Technologies explores the TikTok ban in-depth and answers all these questions and more. Read on to find out how to cope with the wider effects of the US successfully banning an app, even if only temporarily.
Why Ban TikTok?
Many people have probably heard many of the arguments by now for and against keeping TikTok available to US consumers. But it’s still important to have a thorough knowledge of the whole fight to understand the wider implications of a ban like this.
While questions about TikTok’s data privacy have been around for almost as long as the app itself at this point, they entered the public discourse in 2020 when President Trump tried to use an executive order to force the sale of TikTok to a US company over concerns the Chinese government was using the app to collect data on millions of Americans and spy on US citizens. While Microsoft was originally tapped as the buyer, the deal fell through.
Since then, the debate over TikTok’s potential threats to cybersecurity has only intensified, leading the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi, to a contentious standoff in front of US Congress members in March of 2024. However, the fight really picked up when a bipartisan effort to ban or force the sale of TikTok in the US was successful in April. President Biden signed the law on April 24th, kicking off another firestorm of legal challenges by ByteDance in US courts seeking to overturn the ban on grounds it violates freedom of expression granted in the First Amendment.
However, the courts have been mostly unanimous in ruling national security concerns can override certain protections granted in the Bill of Rights. The security concerns come from the way the Chinese government treats companies that do business within China. Especially those with headquarters within China or its administrative regions. Two laws from 2014 and 2017 are the main cause for concern, granting the Chinese government the ability to force companies to gather and hand over intelligence data on their behalf. TikTok, as a global sensation with millions of accounts created in the US alone, is a ripe intelligence target with access to demographic information, viewing habits, and more.
So What Happens to TikTok Now?
As of Sunday, app stores are required to stop allowing new downloads of the app and are no longer making updates available. ByteDance briefly shut down US operations for a period of 14 hours from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon, instead showing users who attempt to log in a popup directing them to a website with more information about the ban, and allowing them a chance to download their data. ByteDance’s decision to effectively scuttle their own app presented a problem for US citizens hoping to simply use VPNs or change country codes on their phones to access the app again. However, as of this writing, TikTok has resumed functioning in the United States again, despite not making a reappearance on the app store as of yet.
President Donald Trump has promised to halt enforcement of the TikTok ban by 90 days until ByteDance can sell 50% of its stake in the company to a US company or government agency (the narrative here is rather murky at this time, and no further clarifications have been offered). However, it’s still unclear what is going to happen if ByteDance refuses to sell. Will the app be banned again? Will ByteDance shut it down for longer this time? Will it go away forever? At this point in time, anything could happen.
There are some US-based companies currently interested in buying the app. In fact, the Chinese government is reportedly exploring the prospect of Elon Musk acquiring TikTok. However, nothing is set in stone as of yet.
What Does This Mean for US Businesses?
Until the cloudy future of TikTok is made more certain, it means companies who advertise or do business on TikTok may need to wind down these operations for now. As the app is essentially no longer supported in the US within the two main app stores, eCommerce and advertising capabilities may be curtailed, or unavailable. If you rely on TikTok to do business or gain new business, you’ll probably need to find a temporary alternative.
Right now, Instagram and YouTube are seen as the likely successors to TikTok. Both platforms contain short-form video content options in the form of Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts. If you haven’t already, it might be time to consider looking into advertising options for either or both. Instagram and YouTube also have eCommerce options in the form of Instagram Shopping and YouTube Shopping. While not a perfect solution, it at least allows you to continue digital operations and potentially continue to drive customers from social media sources while we wait for TikTok’s death sentence to be fully commuted.
The greater challenge comes from finding new spaces to reach your target audience. If your audience was mostly on TikTok and that’s where your brand did most of its outreach, you may need to adjust your 2025 strategy until we know for certain which way things will land. While your customers know exactly what happened, and are likely still aware of your brand, it’s not a given they will migrate to other platforms and interact with you like they did on TikTok. Should a full ban come to pass, some may still hold out hope that TikTok will experience a second miraculous resurrection like they saw on January 19th. If your audience does decide to leave the app, they may also split and go to different platforms. To try to stay top-of-mind, it may be worth looking into digital display ads or midroll ads on video platforms to continue to reach your customers in the interim. In general, a great marketing strategy is to diversify which channels you’re pushing content to in a multi-pronged approach. Now multi-channel marketing is more important than ever because you’ll want to make sure your messaging finds your customers wherever they may land.
The bottom line is that a more permanent TikTok ban will certainly have wide-reaching repercussions on businesses in the US that have successfully adopted it as a marketing platform. But it’s not the end of the road. There are other platforms you can check out that perform very similarly to TikTok, and your current content will be right at home. The beginning of 2025 will be a period of adjustment and innovation, as well as plenty of watching and waiting as we see what President Trump decides to do with the embattled app. But most importantly, remember that everyone is in the same boat. Even larger companies like Amazon are forced to amend their marketing strategies to deal with a potential long-term TikTok ban, so don’t worry too much if performance slows for a bit.
The Wider Implications of the US Government Banning Software and Applications
While your marketing and eCommerce strategies will be just fine with some careful tweaks, we should all be concerned about the broader implications of the US successfully banning a piece of software used by more than half of US citizens. Even though TikTok survived this ban with less than 24 hours of downtime, we cannot guarantee that the next piece of software to be banned will be saved via executive order. Recall that virtually all courts upheld the reasoning for the ban, and the government’s authority to do it. In fact, believe it or not, several other apps also owned by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, are still down in the US as a direct result of the legislation’s wording effectively banning all products and services owned by the company.
This is not the first time we’ve seen the national security defense effectively shove rights and protections onto the back burner either. In fact, US history actually has quite a few instances of this. But it can definitely be argued that this particular ban is setting records with how wide-reaching it is. This time, it’s not the content of the speech itself that’s being regulated like with the Alien and Sedition Acts. An entire public forum was banned because the government didn’t like the venue owner. A public forum that, and this can’t be emphasized enough, is used by 170 million Americans was completely removed from the United States.
While this has massive implications for free speech and the rights afforded to citizens and businesses in the United States, some of the less discussed implications are particularly disturbing for businesses. The justification for the ban, that the software came from a foreign nation and may be used by them to do us harm, is a very generalized sentiment that could genuinely be applied to any piece of software. In the future, this could be used in major ways that would have serious consequences for businesses. While there’s still a lot of speculation about what the future holds for business tech in the US, here are a few scenarios that could potentially play out that businesses will need to quickly adapt to.
Foreign Software Bans
In our globalized economy, software, like any other product, can come from a variety of different sources. Software companies are bought and sold all the time, and it’s not uncommon for US or European companies to find themselves in the hands of Russian or Chinese interests. Being in the business of making money is not a uniquely American trait, after all.
But what happens if a shift in global politics puts the US at odds with the government of a country that’s home to a company that provides software allowing images to be displayed along with your eCommerce listings? What if public perception suddenly turns against a geopolitical rival with ties to the maker of the digital storage and management software you depend on every day to manage your enterprise with cloud computing technology? It’s no secret that the TikTok ban was born (if not entirely, at least in part) from the current global rivalry between the US and China. The entire reason it’s gotten this far is because the US government doesn’t want the Chinese government to have an edge over them.
However, this creates a terrifying precedent where the ever-changing winds of global politics can potentially cause the death of entire industries overnight. To be fair, businesses navigating the rough waters between international animosities is nothing new. Any company that does business with an entity outside of their country will need to confront that reality. But before now, there have been guardrails in the US to prevent changes in administrations or failing international partnerships from causing the kind of whiplash we’re all feeling right now from the banning of TikTok. It’s entirely possible that we could wake up tomorrow to learn a sitting president is currently feuding with a new country. And poof. There goes the file-sharing tool we and thousands of other businesses use every day. The justification used to make the TikTok ban happen can apply to just about any software. Most softwares collect some degree of usage statistics. As long as that data collection is seen as a threat by the government, the courts have said they have the right to ban that piece of programming outright.
The end result is a required climate of eternal vigilance. As a company, you will need to know where every component of your software comes from at all times. For some programs, this may be hard to find, as multiple companies are involved in making and supporting a program. It also means you will need to be able to adapt quickly and switch software if the current setup you are using becomes a political casualty.
Increased Domestic Focus
At the end of the day, companies may decide it’s easier to simply try to find all-domestic solutions to computing and software problems to avoid falling afoul of changing global allegiances. However, while relying on Microsoft and Oracle entirely for business operations may work for some companies, there are plenty of specialized industries where specific software applications may be required. In some cases, domestic solutions simply may not be available, causing supply chain issues, product, and service delays.
In some cases, this may lead to innovation as companies are forced to create their own solutions to recurring problems. However, it could just as easily force businesses to utilize more expensive methods of operation, likely increasing the cost of goods to the consumer at the end of the day.
A Potential for Corporate Exodus
Another potential side-effect of increased regulation is the exodus of major companies from the United States to reincorporate elsewhere in the world where the regulatory environment is more favorable. Believe it or not, this sort of thing has happened already in the United States. In 2014, fast food chain Burger King bought Tim Horton’s and moved their corporate headquarters to Canada as part of a tax inversion strategy. They ended up saving millions of dollars on US corporate income taxes. They’re not alone. There’s a growing list of American companies that have either reincorporated in another country or finalized an acquisition deal with another company headquartered elsewhere in the world. Tupperware, the iconic American plastic container brand, is another example, announcing in May 2024 that it was shuttering its last American plant and moving operations to Mexico.
Until now, most incidences of corporate exodus from the United States have mostly been about high taxes. But now that the US can ban software products at will as long as there’s a perceived national security interest, companies might think twice about where they want to make their business decisions. If it becomes too burdensome to deal with software bans, they leave for greener pastures elsewhere in the world. The result would be devastating for the United States domestic economy.
This is certainly an extreme scenario, and likely won’t happen immediately whichever way the TikTok ban plays out. But if there are other instances similar to it where the courts continue to side with the US government, some companies may feel they have no choice but to leave.
Decreased Foreign Business and Investment Interests
We’ve talked a lot about the TikTok ban and its implications from a domestic perspective. But how this is perceived by foreign businesses is equally important. Right now, the world just witnessed the US ban a company from operating or selling products within its territorial borders because it perceived it as a threat. In particular, it was a Chinese company with a lot of the rhetoric surrounding the TikTok ban stopping just shy of claiming all Chinese business interests are likely threats to US security. After all, the Chinese laws that allow them to force TikTok to potentially spy on Americans also apply to other Chinese-owned companies like Lenovo, Forbes, Smithfield Foods, and even AMC Theaters. What’s to stop Congress from banning or forcing the sale of those companies?
Once considered an impossibility, even a short-lived TikTok ban has significantly increased the amount of risk a foreign company takes on when operating in the United States. And while China is the main target now, it’s not unthinkable that other countries could be impacted too. President Trump has made no qualms about feuding with Mexico over illegal immigration disputes and promised on the 2024 campaign trail to enact tariffs on traditional US allies like Canada and the entire European Union. The burden that the US government needs to meet to justify bans imposed by the courts is extremely low. All they need to do is show a compelling national security interest. But that’s never defined. Today it’s protecting the data of US citizens, tomorrow it could be protecting the purchasing power of US citizens and simply seeing economic dominance as a threat to US growth.
While this is another extreme scenario, it’s almost certain that foreign companies are scrutinizing US assets and operations right now after US laws and courts forced TikTok to halt operations for most of a day.
Blade Technologies is Here to Help
Whatever the next months and years bring us as the dust around the TikTok ban begins to settle, Blade Technologies is here to help you maintain your business operations at full capacity. We offer expert cloud computing management services to help keep your company on the same page and moving forward so you’re always organized and on track. But if that’s not enough, we can also help you design and implement company-wide network infrastructure to help your business lay down foundations and grow.
Want to focus on business operations and leave all the software and technology to the professionals? Blade offers Managed IT Services, including vCIO to keep your company running smoothly. Finally, to keep your data and your files safe, Blade provides comprehensive cybersecurity services. No matter what your technology or security needs, Blade is here for you. Our partnership has helped hundreds of other businesses just like yours succeed.
Get in touch with us today, and whether TikTok gets a full pardon or is finally put away for good, let’s start navigating this new world of extra technology scrutiny together.
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