Biden signed a bill banning access to an Internet service. The Supreme Court has upheld the ban, ruling in effect that claiming “national security” overrides the First Amendment. What happens next isn’t clear, but the sloppy news reports I’ve seen indicate that it could be worse than I thought. The law doesn’t do much directly to ByteDance, which is a foreign company. It’s really a ban on what businesses in the USA can do.

CNN’s report is typically sloppy and alarming in what it suggests.

“TikTok on Friday said that it would turn off more than 170 million Americans’ access to the super popular video app on Sunday [January 20, 2025].” Meaning what? That Americans’ accounts will be disabled? How will TikTok determine which accounts belong to Americans? Will Joe Biden (who still has an account on this alleged threat to national security) be kicked off?

The article ominously says that “service providers” “face steep fines for allowing access to the app in the event of a ban.” Not just offering it, but “allowing access” to it.

An NPR article is a bit more specific.

While the law concerns TikTok, it actually targets the companies that make the platform accessible in the U.S., including app stores like Apple’s App Store and Google Play, as well as cloud service providers like Oracle.
 
The fine print makes it illegal for any such entities to “distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application” either through a marketplace or internet hosting services.

That’s the key. The ban actually targets US infrastructure. It bans making software available, including security updates to previously installed software. It bans CDN (content delivery network) and storage services. I don’t think DNS services have to blackhole TikTok, but I’m not sure they don’t.

What software exactly is banned? It it TikTok’s proprietary client, or any front end that allows access? I can’t find any alternative clients, open source or otherwise; probably the app depends on proprietary protocols. But what if ByteDance licensed its protocols to an American company to create a new client? Would that be legal since it’s an American app, or would it be banned because it enables access to TikTok? Better yet, what if TikTok opened up its protocols and allowed Fediverse access?

Maybe Trump will declare the US government won’t enforce the ban. At least then he’ll have done one good thing. If the ban goes into effect and stays there, we can expect a real “byte dance” to work around it.