Millions of Californians use TikTok. What happens if the popular app is banned?
Sacramento-area influencer Maddy Edmunds reluctantly joined TikTok in 2021 after spending three years posting content about local businesses and events on Instagram.
Her friends told her that she was “missing out” by not joining TikTok sooner but Edmunds didn’t want to have another social media platform consume her time.
As she learned more about TikTok, however, she decided to give the short-form video app a try.
Edmunds, who’s built a sizable TikTok following over the past four years, said she’s going to miss the app if a federal ban goes into effect this weekend.
In April, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a U.S. company or shut down operations in the United States by Sunday, Jan. 19 — arguing that the app poses a risk to national security.
TikTok and its users have challenged the law, saying it violates their First Amendment rights to free speech. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against TikTok on Friday, requiring the popular app to now either be shut down or sold.
When is Tiktok being banned?
TikTok could potentially stop operating in the United States on Sunday, Jan. 19.
How could Tiktok ban affect California users?
In California, about 16 million people and 890,000 businesses actively use TikTok, according to data from the platform.
Those include influencers like Edmunds, who has 68,200 followers on TikTok and 104,000 followers on Instagram.
Her first video to reach a million views on the platform was about the River Fox Train Rail Bikes in West Sacramento. After that video went viral, Edmunds said, she quickly earned 30,000 to 40,000 followers.
“I hadn’t even been on (TikTok) for a year, and I gained more followers than I had on Instagram,” she said.
Edmunds appreciates Tiktok’s more relaxed “vibe,” compared to Instagram’s more “curated” feel.
Sacramento-area influencer Ashley Newell agreed.
“In the past, (Instagram has) gone toward a certain aesthetic of when they make people viral,” Newell said. “On TikTok, it was everybody… It was really nice to see creators of all different shapes and sizes and backgrounds.”
Newell has been posting about local restaurants and small businesses on TikTok since 2020, and said she’s seen her content make an impact on her community.
“On TikTok, I would post a video and that afternoon … someone would be like, ‘I saw your video and I went and I tried that restaurant,’” Newell said.
“Tik Tok has made it so people will go out and support their community … in a way that on other platforms I have not seen,” she added.
If TikTok is banned, both creators said they will keep posting content on Instagram and YouTube.
“I’m always just looking for ways to be creative and share my creativity,” Edmunds said.
Can I still use TikTok if it’s banned?
It depends on how TikTok decides to respond to the ban, according to Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
TikTok lawyer Noel Francisco told Supreme Court justices that the app would no longer function once the ban was in effect.
“On Jan. 19th, as I understand it, we shut down,” Francisco said during oral arguments.
If TikTok chooses to cease operations in the United States on Sunday, the app will stop working on users’ phones and no longer be accessible through web browsers, Ruane explained.
When India cut off access to TikTok in June 2020, users trying to access the app saw a pop-up message saying that the service was no longer available.
A similar message could appear on TikTok starting Sunday, Ruane said.
If TikTok does not immediately close down operations, people will still be able to use the app. However, it will degrade over time.
“If you click on it, it’ll still be there, but it may take longer to load because internet hosting services were no longer allowed to be provided within the United States,” Ruane said. “Over time, you will not be able to update the app.”
Eventually, users will no longer be able to access it on their phones, she said.
Will TikTok be available to download on app stores?
Should the ban take effect, TikTok will likely no longer be available via Apple, Google or other app stores.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act specifically targets companies and makes it illegal for these companies to offer TikTok on their platforms.
“It will immediately disappear from app stores, I imagine,” Ruane said.
Is it illegal to use TikTok after it’s banned?
No, the law does not apply to individual internet users.
It is not illegal nor is there any punishment for people who continue to access TikTok after the ban takes effect on Sunday, Ruane said.
Are there ways to get around the ban?
In a word, yes.
You can use a virtual private network, or VPN, that masks your location and privately connects you to a foreign server.
It may take longer to access content, there may be more errors in the app’s performance and the quality could be reduced since internet hosting services won’t be available in the United States, Ruane said.
Since the ban will likely prohibit millions of people from accessing the app, you can expect less videos and interaction, she said.
“Using a VPN is a barrier, having a buggy app is a barrier and that means that the community itself within the United States is going to degrade,” she said.
How should users prepare for TikTok ban?
Ruane recommended that people preserve their content and data from TikTok ahead of the Sunday ban.
You can easily grab individual videos from the app or use third-party websites to download all of your videos at once.
What other social media platforms are available in California?
Californians seeking new social media platforms in light of the TikTok ban have a few popular options.
These include:
Bluesky
Bluesky is a social media platform aiming to “decentralize” social networking.
Users have more control over the app than they would on Instagram or X, including access to their own servers, content moderation and customization over their content algorithm.
Ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who began the Bluesky project in 2019, described it as an “open social media ecosystem” where users have more choice and control over their experience.
The app launched in February had more than 13 million users by November.
Lemon8
Lemon8 is a lifestyle community app developed by ByteDance. The app allows users to post short-form videos and photos, similar to TikTok.
According to Ruane, Lemon8 could be subject to the same ban as TikTok, since they share a parent company.
On Thursday morning, Lemon8 was in the No. 2 spot on the Apple App Store’s and Google Play Store’s charts, behind competing lifestyle social media platform Xiaohongshu.
RedNote/Xiaohongshu
RedNote is the English name of the popular Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, which allows users to share posts with video, text and photo. There’s also a shopping feature.
More than 700,000 new users joined Xiaohongshu within a period of two days, Reuters recently reported.
As of Thursday morning, Xiaohongshu was at the No. 1 spot on the Apple App Store’s and Google Play Store’s charts.
Californians were among the most likely to search for Xiaohongshu in the past week, as previously reported by The Sacramento Bee.
Newell said she is not interested in joining Xiaohongshu in light of the TikTok ban.
“If they’re going to take away TikTok, which is a Chinese app, why are they going to let us use RedNote?” she said. “I don’t want to grow another platform just to have it taken away.”
This story was originally published January 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
