A US TikTok Ban Is Being Talked About & Here's What You Need To Know

Is TikTok going to be banned?

The U.S. government hasn't committed to banning TikTok as of November 3, 2022.

However, Brendan Carr, one of the FCC's three commissioners, did recommend banning TikTok in a recent interview with Axios.

"I don't believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban," said Carr.

Why does the U.S. want to ban TikTok?

According to Carr and other critics, the big problem with TikTok is its "ownership by a Chinese parent company" and fears that it'll poke around in your user data.

The Chinese government owns a stake in TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, and reports suggest that China can use its influence to look at users' location data and other personal info.

We don't know exactly how much that's happening already, but the U.S. has set up a committee to look into all of it.

It's that committee — and not Carr's FCC — that will have a big say in whether TikTok gets banned.

However, Carr says he can't imagine a world where you could protect TikTok users' data well enough "that it's not finding its way back into the hands" of China's government.

Is TikTok getting deleted in 2022?

No bans have been announced as of November 3, but it's worth pointing out that there are politics at play in this whole thing.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump nearly banned TikTok in 2020 amid the same concerns about privacy.

Now his Republican allies, including Carr, are talking about it again ahead of a midterm election that could put their party back in control of the U.S. House and Senate.

However, any Republican moves would have to wait until 2023 because they won't take their seats until that point.

In the meantime, it's currently illegal to have TikTok on your work phone if you have a job with the U.S. government.

What does TikTok have to say about all of this?

TikTok told Axios that it supports U.S. data privacy laws that apply to all companies, and it's working with lawmakers to sort out their concerns.

"We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the U.S. Government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns," the spokesperson said.

Will the U.S. buy TikTok?

U.S. leaders talked about forcing TikTok to sell to American owners in 2020, but President Joe Biden's administration backed off that plan in early 2021. There have also been a bunch of lawsuits around this issue and things are murky.

How many TikTok users are in the U.S.?

TikTok has an estimated 136.42 million users in the United States, according to numbers compiled by Statista. That's over half of the country's adult population.

The app has an estimated 1 billion monthly users according to Statista, although that number is 1.6 billion if you combine it with Douyin, ByteDance's China-only version of the app.

If you combine the two, TikTok/Douyin are bigger than Instagram and trail only WhatsApp, YouTube and Facebook for monthly user numbers.

Where is TikTok currently banned?

India banned TikTok in 2020.

Russia started censoring TikTok earlier this year amid its war on Ukraine. Indonesia and Bangladesh have also taken steps to restrict or ban the app.