Both of the major parties supported the bill. Republican Senator and chairman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Marco Rubio, said that “for years, we’ve allowed the Chinese Communist Party to control one of the most popular apps in America… A new law is going to require its Chinese owner to sell the app. This is a good move for America.”

Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, meanwhile stated that “the idea that we would give the Communist Party this much of a propaganda tool, as well as the ability to scrape 170 million Americans’ personal data, is a national security risk”.

Statistics from BackLinko claim that TikTok currently has over 1bn monthly active users, meaning that out of the 5.07bn social media users, 19.7% use TikTok in some way. Adult Americans spend an average daily screen time of 55.8 minutes on TikTok.

Small to medium-sized businesses use TikTok to promote their products, with a recent survey by Statista finding that over 38% of social media marketing professionals had planned last year to increase their usage of TikTok for promotional campaigns.

In a new leap by the company, the TikTok Shop feature, which began testing in the US in November 2022, is another way that TikTok facilitates e-commerce – though it is only available in Southeast Asia, the US and the UK. Product Showcase is another in-app feature that allows potential buyers to easily shop for items within a seller’s account.

Shou Zi Chew, Singaporean CEO of TikTok since 2021, responded to the US bill in a TikTok video saying “make no mistake, this is a ban. A ban on TikTok, and a ban on you and your voice… The facts and the Constitution are on our side… We have invested billions of dollars to secure your data and keep our platform free from outside manipulation.”

On May 7, TikTok sued the US government over the potential ban, stating Congress has ‘taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning TikTok’ and that it is ‘unconstitutional’.

Many countries such as France, Ireland, the UK and India have already imposed regulations on app usage, ranging from banning TikTok on devices of government employees to having a complete nationwide ban for all citizens.

So, what’s next? To avoid being banned, ByteDance must sell the app within the next nine months. If it doesn’t, TikTok will be deleted from US devices.

Investors such as former Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary have already shown interest in buying the app, but ByteDance has no shown no interest in selling.