Business
Congress is threatening to ban TikTok. Here's what you should know
The House of Representatives’ lopsided vote Wednesday in favor of a bill banning TikTok in the U.S. unless it is freed from Chinese control suggests the wildly popular short-video app could soon join Netscape and Myspace in the dustbin of history.
But the situation is far more complicated than that.
Policymakers agree that TikTok poses unique privacy and security threats because of the Chinese government’s influence over its owner, Beijing-based ByteDance. But the app has a powerful, albeit newly converted, backer in former President Trump, meaning that Republicans who would ordinarily support any bill to lessen Chinese influence are torn on the TikTok proposal.
Beyond that, TikTok captures the attention of an estimated 150 million Americans each month, roughly half of whom are active users, making it one of the most popular apps in the country — despite concerns about privacy, misinformation and harm to young users. The potential ban has drawn fiery objections from across the country, including from entrepreneurs, small businesses and marketers who say it would be a financial shock.
Some opponents of a ban have called it a violation of the 1st Amendment. Others wondered why TikTok was being singled out as a threat, considering how many apps hoover up their users’ personal data. And some argued that the bill would benefit only U.S. tech giants Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet, the owner of YouTube.
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s happening and why, and what it means for TikTok users.
What does the bill seek from TikTok?
The House-passed bill seeks to do the same thing Trump sought to do as president: take TikTok out of the hands of a Chinese company subject to Chinese law. The Trump administration went so far as to ban TikTok in the United States in 2020. That order was blocked by two federal courts, however, which held that the administration had overstepped its authority.
ByteDance, an internet-focused, venture-capital-funded startup founded in China in 2012, owns 100% of TikTok. Although outside investors control 60% of ByteDance, according to Axios, the Chinese company retains operational control.
The new bill, which sped through the House, would prohibit companies from distributing, maintaining or updating a “foreign adversary controlled application,” or providing internet hosting services for companies that do any of those things. It defines “foreign adversary controlled application” as ByteDance, TikTok and its successors, although it would give the president the power to name other social media and communications apps with 1 million or more users that are controlled by people residing in a “foreign adversary country.”
If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the measure would give ByteDance 180 days to end Chinese control, which would require it to limit Chinese investors to a 20% stake in the company. That would probably require ByteDance to spin off TikTok into an independent company with more limited Chinese investment.
If ByteDance did not comply, the bill would require it to let users retrieve all their data, including all information about their preferences, views and uploads, in a format that could be transferred to another social media app.
Who uses TikTok?
According to Pew Research Center, 33% of U.S. adults said last year that they use TikTok. That’s a lot of people, yet it pales in comparison with the number using other major social media platforms. According to Pew, 83% of U.S. adults said last year that they use YouTube and 47% said they use Instagram.
Young people are far more likely to use TikTok than their parents, but even they make heavier use of YouTube and Instagram. According to Pew, 62% of 18- to 29-year-olds say they use TikTok, as do 63% of 13- to 17-year-olds.
“To me, TikTok is modern-day television and so any kind of disturbance of it would really hurt people — not just creators — because people really enjoy it,” said television personality Foodgod, formerly known as Jonathan Cheban.
Foodgod, who has 8.5 million followers for his food and lifestyle videos on TikTok, said he cycles through the social media apps on his phone every hour and enjoys the more casual vibe on TikTok. Banning it, he said, would be “literally like going into someone’s room and ripping their TV out of the wall, which I think is insane.”
“But honestly, I think TikTok is here to stay. There’s too many people on it and too many people love it,” he said. “It feels like you’re so much freer on TikTok to do what you want. It’s not like Instagram — everything is so structured and you have to make it perfect.”
Could the government really ban TikTok?
Passing the Senate might be the smallest hurdle remaining for a TikTok ban.
ByteDance and other opponents of the bill are almost certain to challenge it in court on 1st Amendment grounds, just as they successfully challenged Montana’s attempt to ban the app. Defenders of the bill say it doesn’t impinge on free speech because it targets ByteDance’s conduct, not the content on the app. But critics counter that the bill wouldn’t protect Americans from having their data harvested by foreign interests.
Telecom industry experts say that it’s technically possible to ban TikTok, but there are issues.
First, the bill wouldn’t remove TikTok from the phones that already have it. It would, however, bar companies from providing TikTok updates, which could render the app unusable over time as phone operating systems change.
Second, although the bill would force Google Play and Apple’s App Store to stop distributing TikTok’s app in the U.S., it wouldn’t apply to non-U.S. sources of phone software, nor would it be easy to enforce on unofficial sites online. So the app and its updates would remain available to people willing and able to “sideload” them from such sources.
That’s not hard on an Android phone, but on an Apple iPhone, it’s trickier — at least for now. Apple has just started allowing a form of sideloading in Europe, in response to the European Digital Markets Act.
There’s a trade-off to this approach, however, said Emma Llansó, former director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Without regular privacy and security updates, the app would become “a great target for people looking to exploit out-of-date software,” she said, adding, “It creates this other kind of vulnerability that would be affecting millions of people, including a lot of young people.”
If the government formally outlawed TikTok, network operators could conceivably block traffic between the company’s servers and U.S. users. But the app’s enormous user base may rush to find ways to circumvent any barriers, such as using virtual private networks to connect to TikTok through other countries, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America. “Savvy Chinese can do it, so [it] should be so much easier here,” Calabrese said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this became a thing.”
What would a ban mean for content creators and small businesses?
An effective ban — which, again, is not a sure thing even if the bill becomes law — would mean at least three things for content creators.
Established creators would be cut off from the loyal audience of followers they’d worked to build. New and established creators alike would lose access to a giant global marketplace of viewers. And creators of all stripes would have one fewer outlet for their work that offered unique tools and sensibilities.
The same would be true for the estimated 7 million small businesses that use TikTok to boost sales, by the app’s count. According to a survey last year by Capterra, a software consultant, small and medium-size businesses say their marketing efforts get far more engagement on TikTok than on other social media networks.
According to the Capterra survey, businesses have found the social network to be particularly useful in capitalizing on trends, carving out a distinct niche for their brand and educating customers about their products and services.
Granted, there are other platforms for the short videos that make up the vast majority of TikTok content, including Instagram Reels and YouTube #Shorts. Like TikTok, they use secret and mystifying algorithms to decide which videos to show users; the lessons creators learned in TikTok about how to generate views and build an audience may not apply anywhere else.
Anecdotes abound about people who quit their day jobs so they could build a business out of TikTok videos. The platform isn’t just for dancers, lip-synchers and pranksters — it’s also become a serious vehicle for ecommerce. The app launched TikTok Shop in September, quickly powering $7 million in sales a day.
“I’m kind of in denial to be honest,” said Kelsey Martinez, 32, a TikTok creator who lives in Pasadena. “It just never occurred to me that this could actually happen. If TikTok were to go away tomorrow, it would completely change my entire life.”
Martinez joined the platform in 2022, mainly posting about her weight-loss journey. Last summer, after expanding her videos to include fashion, beauty and lifestyle content, her TikTok account took off, growing to more than 287,000 followers today. She gets a cut of the sales made from product links included in her videos, and has landed brand deals with skin-care companies Murad and Salt & Stone as well as Lizzo’s shapewear brand, Yitty.
“I actually stepped away from my full-time position because I’ve been able to make a living and make multiple times my yearly salary through TikTok. And so, really, it’s everything,” said Martinez, who previously worked in human resources for a nonprofit.
“This is what I do, this is my job. I would definitely take a hit if it were to go away,” she said.
Many creators say they already cross-post their TikTok videos to Instagram and other platforms (and vice versa), although the results can differ dramatically and unpredictably. TikTok creators who aren’t already putting their work on multiple platforms have a few months to do so before a federal ban could take effect.
Bear in mind that the sites have different approaches to monetizing videos and generating revenue for creators. And building an audience presents a different challenge on each platform; for example, Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram encourage creators to pay to target their content to particular types of viewers, while building an audience on TikTok is more organic, said Kellis Landrum, co-founder of Los Angeles marketing agency True North Social.
TikTok influencer Ashley Dunham has been following news of the proposed ban carefully and has already made some adjustments to her social media strategy.
“I’ve been starting to post more of my content over on Instagram and it’s surprisingly getting some traction,” said Dunham, whose posts chronicle her experience with semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic), plastic surgery and polycystic ovary syndrome. “The one downside about Instagram is that it’s always two weeks behind on trends.”
The 33-year-old from Jacksonville, Fla., called the possible TikTok ban “a disservice to not only creators but Americans as a whole,” saying U.S.-based apps similarly collect personal data from users and can be manipulated.
What would a ban mean for parents?
Aside from the national security concerns surrounding China’s access to TikTok users’ personal data, the biggest complaint about the app is how well it holds the attention of young users. In Pew’s survey last year, 17% of teens said they use TikTok almost constantly, and an additional 32% used it several times a day.
Other concerns are more safety related, including fears that TikTok’s videos can fuel eating disorders and that the videos young people make of themselves will expose them to predators. The app’s default settings try to address those concerns, although the settings can be changed or circumvented by determined users.
If TikTok were to disappear tomorrow, that wouldn’t stop kids from staring at their cellphones for hours on end. According to Pew’s survey, 46% of teens said they were online almost constantly — far more than the percentage glued to TikTok. An additional 47% said they were online several times per day.
And the complaints raised about TikTok in terms of its addictiveness, reinforcement of unhealthy behavior and risk of predation have been leveled at other social networks as well.
When Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, joined the group of American business leaders traveling with President Trump to Beijing at the last minute this week, many took it as a sign that progress was in store for the company’s long-stalled sales in China.
But as the summit between Mr. Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, wrapped up on Friday, the fate of Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips in China was no clearer than it had been before.
Even Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, seemed uncertain about Nvidia’s future in China, saying in an interview with Bloomberg News on Friday that it was up to Beijing whether Chinese companies would make more purchases from the American chip giant.
Last December, President Trump approved Nvidia, the world’s leading chip maker, to sell one of its most powerful A.I. chips, the H200, to China. But since then, the Chinese government has yet to greenlight any purchases, and no H200s have been sold.
Instead, Beijing has pushed Chinese companies to rely on homegrown technology from chipmakers such as Huawei.
Just before Mr. Trump met with Mr. Xi, China reached a milestone in its long-running quest for technological self-sufficiency. The Chinese start-up DeepSeek said for the first time that its latest artificial intelligence model had been optimized to run on Huawei chips.
Mr. Huang had long warned that this shift was coming. Soon, China’s A.I. companies will rely on Chinese hardware rather than American technology, eroding U.S. influence over A.I. development in China, he has predicted.
U.S. officials did not seem to push the issue during their trip to China this week.
The decision on whether to buy the H200 “is going to be a sovereign decision for China,” Mr. Greer said in the interview. “Obviously we think it could be helpful to them in the long run, but they’ll just have to make their decision on that.”
For years, Washington has used export controls to slow China’s progress in advanced technologies like A.I., and analysts had expected Chinese officials to air their frustration with those restrictions this week.
Despite Mr. Huang’s presence in Beijing, Mr. Greer said, the two sides had not discussed chip export controls at the meeting.
China was firmly committed to producing advanced chips at home and views the U.S. tech industry as a threat to that effort, he said.
“If we are ahead of the game, like we are on A.I. chips, sometimes they feel that can stop their own growth,” he said.
One of Southern California’s most iconic burger chains is marking a milestone — and offering hardcore fans a one-day deal.
Original Tommy’s is offering an 80-cent chili burger on Friday as part of the Los Angeles staple’s 80th anniversary celebration.
“We’ve spent 80 years earning this moment,” the company wrote in a Facebook post announcing the deal. “The best gift we can give is the one you can eat.”
The deal will be offered at all locations from noon to 8 p.m. Customers will be limited to three of the sloppy burgers while supplies last.
The company will also offer live entertainment and giveaways at the original “Shack” stand on Beverly and Rampart Boulevard.
The chain started as a small stand in Westlake in 1946, where the founder, Tom Koulax, started selling burgers covered in his secret chili sauce.
The chain expanded slowly at first, opening five new locations throughout the 1970s.
Original Tommy’s is one of the few Southern California staples to remain regional, operating 32 locations in California and Nevada.
The chain has struggled to keep some storefronts afloat in recent years and closed the last San Diego location in 2023.
“I’m so proud of my dad for opening this business,” Diane Koulax, the founder’s oldest daughter, said on social media. “I’m glad you all enjoy our food that we make. We’re celebrating 80 wonderful years.”
Another Southern California burger giant, In-N-Out, also recently unveiled plans for a new Orange County location to open in late 2026. The location will be at an upcoming shopping center, The Canopy, in Irvine.
Original Tommy’s is still a family-owned chain and announced the anniversary celebration on Facebook. Koulax’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren thanked the chain’s customers.
“We appreciate you guys more than you know and can’t wait to keep serving you for years to come,” Victor Koulax, the founder’s grandson, who has worked at the company for 37 years, said on Facebook.
The chain has inspired dozens of knock-off restaurants, with similar names and chili offerings, across Southern California.
The imitation restaurants are a form of flattery, Bob Auerbach, the founder’s stepson, previously told The Times. The chain doesn’t allow franchising.
In Doha, the stranded gas tanker Rasheeda has become a dark joke.
For more than two months, the vessel has drifted in circles in the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz, carrying the liquefied natural gas that serves as the lifeblood of Qatar’s economy. Residents track the ship on maritime apps and ask one another: “Where is Rasheeda today?”
The looping tanker has become a symbol of the paralysis gripping global energy supplies — a crisis that has cost Qatar billions in lost revenue and helped create energy shortages worldwide.
Qatar, one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, has seen its industry hobbled since war erupted in the Middle East nearly 11 weeks ago and Iranian strikes damaged critical infrastructure. Even facilities that remain intact have shut down because fuel cannot move through the closed Strait of Hormuz.
Since the war began, ships have tried just about everything to get out of the gulf, from calling in high-level diplomatic favors to hand-stitching Pakistani flags, hoping ties to the country mediating the U.S.-Iranian negotiations might secure safe passage.
During a week in Qatar, I interviewed more than a dozen people with knowledge of Qatar’s L.N.G. operations. Sensitivity in Qatar about the scarring of the energy industry is high. So most of the people requested anonymity to speak openly about QatarEnergy — the powerful state-owned energy giant that is the backbone of the economy. The details and observations about the state of Qatar’s L.N.G. industry stem from these conversations.
The consensus from these discussions was that even if the strait reopened tomorrow, Qatari L.N.G. exports would remain crippled for months and most likely impaired for years.
The biggest obstacle is technical. Replacement parts for infrastructure damaged by Iranian attacks can take up to five years to procure. At the same time, global shipping companies no longer trust the route through the strait, potentially leaving much of Qatar’s remaining exports stranded.
QatarEnergy did not respond to requests for comment.
The damage to Qatari gas infrastructure was inflicted in March, when Iran launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ras Laffan, the country’s L.N.G. production hub. Most were intercepted, but three of the 20 projectiles penetrated defenses and struck L.N.G. trains — the massive liquefaction units that supercool gas for transport.
Rashid Al-Mohanadi, a former engineer who worked on one of the damaged units, remembered the night of the attack. Looking north from his home outside Doha, he saw the sky over Ras Laffan flash with interceptor missiles. The explosions rolled outward like shock waves, rattling the windows and doors of his house. When he stepped outside, the horizon was thick with black smoke.
“That was the moment I realized something had gotten through,” he said.
The facility was already largely idle because Iran had shut the Strait of Hormuz weeks earlier. Experts say the timing most likely spared the plant from further damage, as the lines were not operating under full pressure. Even so, Iran appeared to have hit what engineers describe as the “heart” of L.N.G. liquefaction trains.
The two heavily damaged units accounted for about 17 percent of Ras Laffan’s production. QatarEnergy has indicated that restoring full capacity could take three to five years. Some analysts believe that the estimate is high, but most agree that the recovery will take years.
The strikes appeared to have damaged the main cryogenic heat exchangers, precision machines that perform the final cooling of the gas and whose manufacturing is dominated by a single U.S. company, a unit of the conglomerate Honeywell. Replacement units can take four to five years to obtain.
The heat exchangers are a relatively small target within the Ras Laffan complex, which is more than twice the size of San Francisco, suggesting the strike was aimed at inflicting lasting damage.
Even for infrastructure that survived, getting fuel to market will remain difficult. Unlike the United Arab Emirates and Oman, which have coastlines on the Arabian Sea or Gulf of Oman, Qatar is uniquely vulnerable. All of its maritime infrastructure sits deep inside the Persian Gulf, leaving it without an alternative route to open water.
Roughly 1,600 vessels remain trapped near the Strait of Hormuz, carrying L.N.G., oil and fuel byproducts. After reports that Iran was allowing Pakistani-flagged vessels through, some crews stitched together makeshift flags from scraps of cloth found on board. It did not work.
For shippers, the danger will persist even if a cease-fire holds. Tehran has claimed to have seeded the waterway with undersea explosives. Until international mine-clearing units or Iranian authorities provide credible guarantees of safety, shipping companies are likely to be reluctant to risk their crews’ lives.
The Philippines, which supplies much of the world’s merchant-mariner work force, has begun directing crewing agencies to stop sending Filipino sailors into the conflict zone. Fears of further Iranian aggression and a lack of insurance coverage for such voyages threaten to keep vessels away. That leaves QatarEnergy in a bind.
Qatar cannot simply restart production until it secures commitments from shipping lines to return for new cargoes. If gas continues to accumulate with nowhere to go, storage tanks could overflow, forcing shutdowns that risk permanent damage. Because of that bottleneck, the entire export system is unlikely to return to normal for at least three to four months after the strait reopens.
The full extent of the damage is still unclear, but given the scale of the repairs required, “we’re talking reduced production until the end of the decade,” said Henning Gloystein, a managing director for energy at Eurasia Group, a political risk research firm. “It’s a significant tightening of the market.”
Even if the immediate crisis is resolved, many in the energy industry think that the Strait of Hormuz will not return to what it was. Support is growing for enormous infrastructure projects designed to bypass the strait, potentially redrawing the Middle East’s energy map.
One frequently discussed proposal is a pipeline across the Arabian Peninsula to a new liquefaction and export terminal in Jeddah on the Red Sea. Another would extend pipelines south to the Omani port of Duqm, allowing Qatari gas to be loaded directly onto ships in the Arabian Sea.
But pipelines carry geopolitical risks of their own. Relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia — through which any overland route would have to pass — are warm now but scarred by a yearslong rift in which the kingdom cut off diplomatic and transport ties. Pipeline infrastructure is also vulnerable to missile and drone attacks.
For now, the immediate urgency is reopening the waterway itself. “Priority No. 1 is getting the strait open,” said Mr. Al-Mohanadi, the engineer who used to work at Ras Laffan. “Then it becomes about finding a mechanism to keep it open.”
After nearly a decade at a QatarEnergy-Exxon Mobil joint venture, Mr. Al-Mohanadi joined the Doha-based Center for International Policy Research as a vice president. He said one option was to create a multilateral maritime insurance “piggy bank” — a private and sovereign-backed fund that would insure ships transiting dangerous waterways such as the strait.
He also said there was growing pressure for Asia’s largest energy consumers to take a more active role in regional maritime security. For decades, the United States has served as the Gulf’s de facto guarantor, maintaining military bases across the region. Mr. Al-Mohanadi argues that the burden should increasingly be shared by Asian “middle powers” most dependent on Middle Eastern energy exports.
“We’re in a period of history where it’s a jungle, and that is threatening global energy security and entire economies,” he said recently over a late-night coffee at a hotel overlooking the waters off the northern tip of Doha Bay.
Near the end of our conversation, Mr. Al-Mohanadi opened a maritime tracking app on his phone. He typed in “Rasheeda,” and out emerged a rendering of the tanker, still endlessly circling the gulf. “Poor Rasheeda,” he said, looking down at the screen. “At this point, she must be so tired.”
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