Being an extremely successful service like TikTok doesn’t even remotely guarantee you to be able to relax and enjoy the success, especially if your activity is seen in the middle of the cross-play of the current geopolitical panorama, and even more so if one of the parties (and not yourself) believes that you are cooperating with the other. The context, of course, is the current tension between China and the United States and accusations by US authorities that ByteDance, the owner of the service, has no qualms about handing over data (obviously obtained through TikTok) to the government. Asian giant.

TikTok’s problems in the United States are nothing new. Let us recall that in the previous government Donald Trump even issued an order to block access to the service from the United States, although it is true that this measure was later reversed. And the arrival of a new tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue hasn’t made much of a difference in that regard, to the extent that the first ultimatum was proposed more than a year ago that the service should be outsourced to another company (such as already raised during the Trump administration). or would face measures such as a possible blockade. However, this coercive measure provided a period of one year. However, the measure did not receive Senate support on that occasion.

This actually happened… a little over a yearand as you may already know or have guessed, TikTok is still owned by ByteDance, which, yes, claims to have taken measures to dispel the suspicions of US authorities, such as transferring the service’s data management to Oracle’s servers in the US. However, all these steps were not enough for Joe Biden’s manager, he decided to take a harder line.

So as we read in TechCrunch, The United States Senate has passed a bill that would ban TikTok in the US unless ByteDance sells the service. The text, approved and voted for by a large majority of senators from both parties (although the vote was tied to the approval of major foreign aid to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine to gain support), provides a period of nine months, with an extra 90 days of margin, so we’re talking again about a real period of one year. The approved text must be signed by President Biden to take effect and start the countdown, but that signing is expected to happen today.

As expected, ByteDance has already announced this will resort to justice to try to stop this movement, in addition to addressing the volume of users and business it generates in the United States, which amounts to $14.7 billion for small and medium-sized businesses in the country. For their part, entities such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as personalities such as Steve Wozniak and, to the surprise of many, spoke out against this measure, Donald Trump, even though in this case it is quite evident that it is a statement for election purposes.

Now of course The big question is what will happen to TikTok if ByteDance does not stop the application of this text of the law through justice. While not impossible, it seems unlikely that he will decide to sell to a company that has approval from US authorities. And although the sale can bring a huge amount of income, we must not forget that we are talking about one of the most successful services, especially among a very desirable audience, the youngest. According to the latest figures, TikTok already exceeds one billion users, of which approximately 170 million are Americans. So blocking in said country would mean giving up around 17% of your user base, which from another perspective means keeping around 83%.