A TikTok ban in the US is set to go ahead on Sunday after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal
What a ban looks like and how it would be enforced remains uncertain. The White House says it will leave enforcement to the incoming Trump administration
Justices ruled that the law passed by Congress asking the app's Chinese owner to sell its stake or face a US ban did not violate free speech rights
The legal drama stems from the US government's national security concerns and TikTok's ties to China
Last year, ByteDance was ordered to sell the app to a US buyer or it would be banned by 19 January – that sale has not yet happened
TikTok is one of the most popular short-form video apps in the world, and is a major part of a multi-billion dollar influencer economy
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TikTokers' say goodbye to their 'Chinese spy' and move to RedNote
Edited by Brandon Livesay and Phil McCausland in New York
Kerry Allen
Chinese Media Analyst
There have been reports this week that Americans have been migrating over to another Chinese app unofficially known as RedNote, if the ban goes ahead.
RedNote is often thought of as China’s answer to Instagram. It’s a picture and video sharing app called Xiaohongshu (meaning “little red book”) which has been around since 2013.
Media have observed that it has not only topped the charts as being the most downloaded free-to-use app this week in the US, but also the UK, Canada, Ireland and Italy.
It could therefore see a surge of popularity; however, given China’s tight state media controls, and much stricter domestic regulatory requirements, the longevity of Chinese and foreign audiences being able to communicate freely on the platform is doubtful.
Western social media apps like Facebook, X and Instagram are blocked in China, as is TikTok.
Instead, Chinese audiences use a mirrored service called Douyin. It has the same functionalities as TikTok, but it means Chinese users can only speak among themselves, and foreign audiences with other foreign users.
You may be wondering when the discussion around banning TikTok in the US started, and how it arrived at the Supreme Court's decision today. Here is a quick timeline of the events that got us here:
A TikTok ban in the US had support from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. But many everyday Americans do not agree.
In the latest episode of Americast, Sarah, Marianna and Anthony unpick the politics behind the ban and the players who may step in to prevent TikTok shutting its US operation.
You can listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you type 'TikTok ban' into TikTok right now, creators with big and small followings are reacting to news of the incoming ban.
Father and son comedy duo Joe and Frank Mele – who run an account with over 30m followers – say they "don't really know what [the ban] means for the future of TikTok" and will continue to post on the app while they still can.
"In case the ban comes quicker than we hope, we just wanted to say thank you," they say in a video posted on Friday.
Other creators are following a trend of lip-syncing to a Family Guy quote or expressing their hope that YouTuber Mr Beast might "save TikTok" after he said he wanted to buy the app on X.
A former cybersecurity advisor to Barack Obama says the Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban was "rushed".
Timothy Edgar, a former ACLU lawyer who served on Obama's National Security Council, helped submit a brief to the Supreme Court in support of TikTok's appeal.
Speaking to Anita Anand on Radio 4's PM programme, he said he was surprised with the unanimous decision and "frankly disappointed with the reasoning".
Edgar argued that Americans "deserved a better process", and alleged that the Supreme Court decision "ignores some of the more important questions that we tried to raise in our brief".
"I thought this was a very important free speech case," Edgar said. "I've called it the most important free speech case in a generation."
The former cybersecurity official said that he though that there is little that Trump can do as president to overturn the decision.
"Congress enacted this law and only Congress can repeal it," said Edgar, who expressed doubt that TikTok could be sold.
Shou Zi Chew
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has thanked President-elect Donald Trump for his commitment to "work with us to find a solution including that keeps TikTok available in the United States".
Chew posted the comments on TikTok after the Supreme Court upheld a law that could ban the app unless it is sold from its current Chinese owner ByteDance.
As we reported earlier, Trump said any decision on the app's future will be up to him, but that he "must have time to review the situation". Media reports previously suggested that Trump may issue an executive order to delay the ban for 60 to 90 days.
US media reported yesterday that Zi was invited by the president-elect's team to attend the inauguration on Monday. He is expected to attend.
Aidan Walker
BBC Future reporter
With the guillotine hovering over TikTok's neck, users are bracing for a cultural void.
For all the criticisms levied at the app, many say TikTok created a system that made them feel nurtured and uniquely empowered.
No platform in recent memory has had a story or impact quite like TikTok's. It fuelled thousands of small businesses, filled billions of idle hours with entertaining, informative content. It offered opportunities to activists and artists at a moment of increasing uncertainty.
A third of US adults, external and the majority of teenagers are on TikTok, and globally, the app has been downloaded nearly five billion times. According to an analysis by Know Your Meme,, external more of the internet memes gathered by its encyclopaedia came from TikTok, starting in 2022, than anywhere else. Without a doubt, TikTok is the hub for online culture.
At the heart of TikTok is its algorithm – a set of instructions that determine the content displayed to users, based on data about how they engaged with other material.
TikTok can use this data, as well as information about an individual user's device, location and keystroke rhythms, to recommend videos to users on its automatically generated For You feed.
Some researchers have previously claimed the app collects more data from users than others in order to power its highly personalised system.
However, rival social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram collect similar user data.
Imran Rahman-Jones
Technology reporter
Neil Gorsuch was nominated to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump in 2017
At the end of the Supreme Court’s opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch outlines his own opinion on the “dramatic” law.
The Court agrees with the government that there is a risk of American users’ data being sent to the Chinese state.
Justice Gorsuch considers whether alternative laws could have worked to stop this – for example, forbidding TikTok from sending sensitive data abroad.
“The record suggests that would do little to deter [China] from exploiting TikTok to steal Americans’ data,” he says.
And he says the “complexity” of TikTok “may make it impossible for law enforcement to detect violations.”
Finally, he says that in order to check Americans’ data wasn’t flowing overseas, the government would have to monitor its own citizens’ data – which itself would cause “constitutional concerns".
Whether this law will succeed in achieving its ends, I do not know… All I can say is that, at this time and under these constraints, the problem appears real and the response to it not unconstitutional.”
Justice Gorsuch
Iqra Farooq
BBC World Services
TikTok creator Kelley Heyer created the viral Apple Dance to Charli XCX's song
We've been getting reaction from TikTokers who make a living from the app.
Drew Talbert has more than five million followers and tells the BBC World Service's OS programme that his life changed because of the platform.
"I went from being a waiter to being able to own a home and it all started with TikTok. We've seen this coming for years and have built up our platforms elsewhere to protect ourselves," he says.
"We don't buy the reasoning for this," he adds.
Kalani Smith has more than three million followers and calls the proposal "a slap in the face".
"I was homeless before TikTok and lived in the back of my car. Using TikTok propelled me to where I'm at now… Everyone is praying for some sort of miracle – it feels like the government has turned their backs on us," he says.
Kelley Heyer created the viral Apple Dance to Charli XCX's song, which took over timelines last year, and says millions of Americans use TikTok.
"The government taking away TikTok is essentially the government taking away jobs from millions of people," she says. 
Joe Tidy
Cyber correspondent
The last few months of flipping and flopping about TikTok have been a dramatic illustration of the conundrum when a rival nation has a hit product in a rival country.
TikTok’s meteoric rise has, for the first time, challenged the dominance of US social networks.
It’s a new problem for the US and the West in general and the US’s handling of the issue must be quite amusing and perplexing for the Chinese government.
After all – it’s important to remember that this is something that China never has to worry about.
All western social networks are banned in China as standard. It’s been this way for years as part of China’s tight control of what its citizens do online. 
Rachel Looker
Reporting from Washington
Following on from my last post, law professor Carl Tobias says there’s several different ways President-elect Donald Trump could intervene to keep TikTok available to its 170 million American users.
The Washington Post previously reported that Trump may issue an executive order to delay the ban for 60 to 90 days.
Tobias calls this the “safest course” by allowing the app’s users to continue to have access to the platform while Trump finds a solution.
"Whether that solution will be easy to consummate is another matter," he says, adding that there could be obstacles to finding a US-backed company to take over the platform.
He also says Trump could instruct the Department of Justice to not enforce the ban, which would likely raise legal questions with the courts.Rachel Looker
Reporting from Washington
Carl Tobias, a professor at University of Richmond’s School of Law, says he's not surprised by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the ban on TikTok.
He calls it a "well-reasoned" opinion that upholds legislation Congress passed where national security concerns trumped First Amendment concerns.
"I think the court was cautious about overturning an act that had such strong bipartisan support in Congress," he tells me.
Tobias adds that the Biden administration is being deferential by not intervening to block the ban with the incoming administration days away from taking office.
"I think he (Biden) was graciously not stepping in the last second and allowing Trump to go ahead to do whatever he could do once he came into office," he says.
Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter
ByteDance has so far rebuffed the idea of selling TikTok. But the lawyer for the US government told the Supreme Court that a ban might be just the “jolt” needed to persuade it to consider the idea, noting that restrictions could be lifted once a deal materialises.
Any number of companies and billionaires in the US have said they might be interested.
Steven Mnuchin, who as treasury secretary under Donald Trump worked on efforts to sell the app, said last March after the law passed that he was working to put together a group.
Earlier this month, former LA Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and Kevin O’Leary, an investor famous from Shark Tank, also came forward to say they were assembling a bid.
Bobby Kotick, who led video game company Activision Blizzard before its sale to Microsoft, is among the other names reportedly interested.
Even Youtuber Mr Beast appeared to toss his hat in the ring, discussing meeting with “billionaires” about the idea on social media this week, while Chinese officials were reportedly eyeing Elon Musk as a possible buyer.
Helena Humphrey and Claire Betzer
Reporting from Yuma, Arizona
We’re in Yuma County, Arizona, speaking to voters just as the news about the Supreme Court’s ruling broke.
Jonathan Dinsmore is a fourth-generation leafy greens and hay farmer, who’s amassed more than 350,000 followers on TikTok – showing his audience a farmer’s view of Yuma.
“It’s been an opportunity for me to be able to share about our farm, something I’m passionate about,” Jon tells us.
Showing off his rows of iceberg and romaine, the fourth-generation farmer appeared to take the ruling in his stride.
“If we have to move to other platforms, I’m sure that will be the case, but many folks have really taken advantage of it – and we’re optimistic,” Jon says.
The Justice Department has just said the Supreme Court's decision enables the department to "prevent the Chinese government from weaponizing TikTok to undermine America’s national security”.
"Authoritarian regimes should not have unfettered access to millions of Americans’ sensitive data," Attorney General Merrick Garland says.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco says the decision underscores that the bipartisan legislation passed in Congress and signed into law by President Biden protects Americans rather than restricting free speech.
"The next phase of this effort – implementing and ensuring compliance with the law after it goes into effect on January 19 – will be a process that plays out over time," Monaco says in the statement.
For many US content creators, TikTok is their main platform – with some already planning to make the switch to Instagram if the ban goes ahead.
Let's take a look at the biggest US TikTokers, according to Tokfluence:
Gary O'Donoghue
Senior North America correspondent
US-China relations at the beginning of the Biden presidency used to be characterised by the three C's – Competition, Cooperation and Confrontation.
The cooperation bit is practically non-existent. But competition and confrontation are alive and kicking.
In the case of TikTok, the outgoing administration believes the supposed distinction between the Chinese Communist party and owners of TikTok, ByteDance, is illusory.
And that's why TikTok can't be treated as a normal commercial adversary – it has to be confronted as a national security threat.
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have flip-flopped on banning TikTok – politically understandable when it's used by 170 million Americans. But Donald Trump is a much more transactional politician.
So as he moves into the White House, exploiting the legal wriggle room to keep the TikTok ban from being fully enforced could well be a useful negotiating point for leverage on other issues.
Meanwhile, cyber hacks originating in China are a regular occurrence.
For sensitive private and public bodies in the US, the national security threat from a social media company might feel a little way down the priority pecking order.
Lily Jamali
North America Technology Correspondent
What exactly will Friday’s Supreme Court decision mean for TikTok’s 170 million American users?
There had been speculation that without a reprieve, the app might fade into oblivion over time, with updates no longer being delivered to US users which would leave the app increasingly glitchy and unusable.
But TikTok seems poised to take much more decisive action. The app’s lawyers told Supreme Court justices last week that absent their intervention, the app would “go dark” in the US.
TikTok could simply pull the plug, meaning in an instant, the app would cease to work for current users in the United States.
New users, meanwhile, could no longer download the app from the Google or Apple app stores.
But politics could change the outcome. President Biden has said his administration has no plans to intervene on his last day in office, meaning any attempts to lift the ban will be left to President-Elect Donald Trump after he is sworn in on Monday.
Trump has said he has spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about topics including TikTok. And told CNN Friday after the decision: "It ultimately goes up to me, so you're going to see what I'm going to do."Imran Rahman-Jones
Technology reporter
A content creator films a video for his new RedNote account
If TikTok really does go dark (and it’s a big "if"), creators will have to find alternative places to share their videos.
Some have gone to Chinese platform RedNote, which has seen 700,000 new users in the past two days.
There have been some light-hearted interactions between American and Chinese users on the site – including jokes from both sides about “Chinese spies”.
One Chinese user asked the swathe of new “TikTok refugees” for help with their English homework, and received hundreds of replies.
But the reality is creators go where their audiences are.
In the US, that means the main beneficiaries could be closer to home: YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels or Snapchat.
All three platforms are owned by American tech giants.
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