A TikTok ban in America has kicked in preventing Americans from logging onto the platform, but Australians are mostly safe from it happening here.
It’s been rumoured for some time, and now it seems to have happened: TikTok is on pause in the USA as a ban kicks in.
Americans keen on posting short videos to one of the world’s biggest social platforms have just lost their access, as TikTok goes dark in the States.
No cat videos. No capybara videos. No content creation for the STEM feed TikTok Australia just launched.
Owned by Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok had previously been told it needed to be sold or transferred to another company, with US law essentially requiring ByteDance to sever ties with TikTok or be banned.
And that’s exactly what happened, as January 19 arrived in China and ByteDance yanked the app from the American Apple App Store and Google Play Store, while also preventing users from accessing the service if they were in the USA, as well.
“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” TikTok said in a post on its newsroom ahead of the ban.
Why was TikTok banned in the USA?
As part of a ruling that prevents Chinese-owned entities from having too much access to American data and products, TikTok has been cut off, and it’s something you’ve probably seen before, albeit in a different form.
Back in 2019, the US government prevented Huawei from using American-owned products in its devices, including the Google Android operating system and chips manufactured by Qualcomm, essentially forcing the company to redesign and redevelop everything.
The reason was one of American national security, with a rule pertaining to Chinese data collection efforts essentially allowing its government to request data from any Chinese-owned company.
It’s a rule China denies when there’s no legal requirement, but also one where you’d be none the wiser if it ever happened. Simply put, if the government ever requested data from a company your data was housed with, you would essentially have no idea. It would just happen.
With the rise of TikTok and over 170 million Americans using the platform, that was a problem for the US government. If the data was shared, it would be none the wiser, too.
TikTok has tried arguing on behalf of a freedom of speech, an argument the US Supreme Court has largely thrown out, though it’s also expected that the return of Trump as the next US president will “save” the app from being banned after being sworn it, noting that he would “most likely” give it a 90-day reprieve.
While that might sound positive for American TikTok users, it’s worth remembering that the initial trade blacklist issue with regards to data security came from the previous Trump administration in the first place, kicking off in 2019 before Biden took power.
Before this, the one thing that could have potentially saved TikTok from the ban was for its Chinese owners ByteDance selling the service to someone not in China, ideally in the US.
So the ban has kicked off in America. Could the same thing happen in Australia?
Could TikTok ever be banned in Australia?
Australia doesn’t have the same laws as the US, and neither does the rest of the world. So right now, TikTok in Australia is safe. It would be the same in other places, too.
But as to whether a TikTok ban could happen here, that seems unlikely.
As it is, Australia doesn’t have any law preventing Chinese-owned companies from operating in Australia, and doing so would likely create problems for many Australians, particularly with regards to technology and support.
Quite a few of the electric cars arriving on our shores would be affected, as would computer makers, phone companies, solar panel and battery systems, and so on. A law preventing Chinese-owned entities from doing business would likely be problematic locally, to say the least.
If anything, it could only likely be banned from specific organisational devices, such as those operating on behalf of the government, something that was already planned back in 2023.
For most people, it seems highly unlikely TikTok would ever be banned for the general public in Australia. You can continue swiping through videos unscathed. Americans on the other hand may need to wait.
