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CNN
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The fate of TikTok in the United States now rests in the hands of the Supreme Court. And things aren’t looking good for the app.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Friday on the law that could ban TikTok in the United States. The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, would require TikTok to be sold by its China-based parent company ByteDance or face a US ban.

The hearing didn’t appear to go well for TikTok, making it more likely than ever that the ban will take effect on January 19th. Most justices appeared likely to stick with the law, asking TikTok’s lawyers and its users tough questions about the relevance of their argument that the law violates the First Amendment.

Many questions remain about how the ban would work in practice, as there is no precedent for the U.S. government blocking a major social media platform. And much about how the government plans to enforce this remains unclear.

Even TikTok lawyer Noel Francisco seemed unsure how exactly a ban would be implemented. “As far as I know, we closed on January 19th,” he said.

In addition to not being available in app stores, “the law says that all other types of service providers cannot provide service either,” Francisco said. “Essentially, I think they’re going to say, ‘We’re not going to provide the services that are required for you to see it.’ So it will essentially cease operations. I think that’s the consequence of this law.”

TikTok itself said in its emergency filing with the Supreme Court that if the court does not block the law, it will “take effect on January 19, 2025, shutting down TikTok for its more than 170 million monthly American users.”

But some things are clear, including the fact that TikTok won’t suddenly disappear from existing users’ phones.

Here’s what we know about how a ban would work.

Technically, TikTok could go home and block access to the app for American users itself, reprimanding the US government and strengthening its bargaining position with the support of millions of newly angry people who have lost their beloved TikTok. But given how hard the fight is to prevent a ban, it’s more likely that the U.S. government will have to take action to enforce the law.

The US government is widely expected to force app store operators such as Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their platforms.

That would mean new users won’t be able to download it. TikTok’s existing American users could They continue to use the app on their phones, but they can’t update it through the app stores, so the company can’t fix any bugs or security vulnerabilities. And both can add up and ultimately make using the app difficult – if not impossible.

“Vulnerabilities in the app may become known, and hackers will exploit those vulnerabilities to compromise your account or your device,” Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said on CNN’s “Terms of Service” podcast.

.However, it may take weeks or months for existing users’ experience with the app to deteriorate.

The government could also force American internet service providers (ISPs) to do the same Providing access to the Internet and the websites on it in order to block TikTok and make it impossible to access the web version of the platform. But that approach would be complicated, Galperin said, because there are many more ISPs than app stores.

Regardless of what exact route the government takes to block TikTok, there will almost certainly be ways around it, for example: by using a virtual private network or VPN. A VPN is a program that anyone can download that can hide location data and make it appear as if the user is accessing the Internet from another country.

“Many other countries have blocked social media apps and websites using different methods in the past, with very different results and levels of effectiveness,” Galperin said. “In Turkey, for example, many social media sites have been blocked for years, and almost everyone in Turkey uses a VPN that bypasses this censorship.”

Even if the ban goes into effect, it won’t necessarily be permanent. ByteDance would still have the option to sell the platform to a non-Chinese owner to restore access to American users.

And there are willing buyers. A group founded by billionaire Frank McCourt and backed by Shark Tank-famous investor Kevin O’Leary said Thursday that it had made a formal offer to ByteDance to acquire TikTok’s U.S. assets, even though the company has repeatedly said the App is not for sale.

“When push comes to shove and these restrictions go into effect, I think the landscape will fundamentally change in terms of what ByteDance is willing to consider,” Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for the government, said Friday before the Supreme Court. “It could be exactly the jolt that Congress expected that the company would actually have to move forward with the divestiture process.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to save TikTok have also increased uncertainty about how a ban would play out.

Ahead of Friday’s Supreme Court hearing, Trump filed a letter asking the court to temporarily suspend implementation of the ban — which is currently scheduled to begin the day before his inauguration — to give him time as president to negotiate a sale of TikTok.

Legal experts have also suggested that Trump could simply choose not to enforce the law and Apple and Google signal that they will not be fined if they continue to host the app on their platforms.

“It is possible that on January 20th, 21st and 22nd we will be in a different world,” Francisco, TikTok’s lawyer, said on Friday, referring to the change in government.

But it’s not clear whether these companies would be willing to violate the letter of the law, even with an assurance from Trump.

“I’m a little concerned that when a law is in place prohibiting certain actions, suggesting that the president-elect or someone else would not enforce the law would lead a company to ignore enforcement of another assurance would a change to this law,” liberal–Judge Sonia Sotomayor said during the hearing. “Whatever the new president does, it won’t change the reality of these companies.”