Social Sesh: The Plot Twist the U.S. Government Didn’t See Coming With the TikTok Ban

Well, well, well, here we are. By the time you read this, you may have heard the Supreme Court’s decision on the TikTok ban in the United States. Things haven’t exactly unfolded the way legislators thought they would. The years-long battle over TikTok’s future here in the U.S. is finally reaching its dramatic climax, but we’re now facing a plot twist that even the federal government didn’t see coming.

The Big Picture: What Led Us Here?

If you’ve been following along, then you know this TikTok saga has been building momentum for months. In 2022, the U.S. government passed a law requiring TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to either sell the app to a U.S.-based company or shut it down entirely by January 19, 2024. The law came as a response to national security concerns-namely, the fear that the Chinese government could use TikTok’s data-harvesting capabilities to access personal information from American users.

President Biden signed the bill with bipartisan support, but TikTok and its users fought back, claiming that the law violates their First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on January 10, 2025, and it’s been a week full of surprises to see how it will rule.