Tik Tok, the wildly popular social media application, was set to be banned on January 19th of this year. Many wondered why this ban was being enacted and what it would really mean for the 270 million Tik Tok users in the U.S. According to the Courier Journal, Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance and was being banned due to the Chinese Company having access to American data through the app, and then sharing this information with the Chinese government. 

So what really happened? The app was never technically deleted, it still showed up on users’ phones. Instead, the app became completely illegal in the U.S. on hosting sources as well as app stores, meaning that those who did not already have Tik Tok, could not get it or any other ByteDance owned apps, like CapCut or Lemon8. Since the app was no longer available in any app stores, no updates were able to come through leading the app to crash with a message popping up on users screens stating “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”. 

At the time the app was banned, many Americans could not bear the idea of a Tik Tokless world, and decided to join a different app very similar to Tik Tok called RedNote. Along with the fact that the app functions extremely similarly to Tik Tok, it is also Chinese owned! Most of the content on RedNote is in Mandarin and targeted towards its Chinese audience, except for the Americans making videos and commenting things like, “Hello from America” or “here before Tik Tok is banned”. 

As most people know, this ban only lasted about 14 hours before Trump signed an executive order to suspend the ban for 75 days. This order though, according to usatoday.com, has fallen into an odd gray area. Under federal law the Supreme Court banned the app, but Trump essentially told app stores that it is okay to break this law without facing repercussions. Whether or not that is really something Trump can legally do is not fully clear yet.

According to pbs.org, Trump’s extension on the ban will give ByteDance more time to find a buyer. So who could buy the app? According to forbes.com, Project Liberty is attempting to buy Tik Tok and is backed by Kevin O’Leary, a Shark Tank investor. Billionaire Elon Musk is also in the running for purchasing Tik Tok. Arguably the most famous YouTuber in the world, Jimmy Donaldson, or otherwise known as MrBeast is claiming that he could buy Tik Tok as well. Amazon and Rumble are in the race to buy out Tik Tok, as well as Bobby Kotick, activision Blizzard’s former CEO, and former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. In the end, if none of these companies or people buy out the app, it should be banned on April 4th. 

So what could I replace the app with if it actually does get banned? An option if the Tik Tok ban goes through in a few months is always Instagram reels which has a very similar layout, though many complain that the videos on reels have a higher level of violence. Another option would be Snapchat spotlight…but the quality of these videos leaves much to be desired by users. The last alternative to Tik Tok is YouTube shorts which often have longer videos than Instagram and Snapchat. Despite these possible substitutions none of them truly replicate the inspiring community Tik Tok has built over the past nine years. In truth this is still a very fluid issue, and it all depends on if Tik Tok can be sold to an American buyer in the next 75 days.