The Supreme Court on Friday affirmed the law, taking the ban a notch higher. And the company itself posited that in the absence of the Biden intervention it would have closed on Sunday. But although that is now less than forty eight hours away, there are still many question marks regarding what will actually transpire. Will the out-going President Joe Biden administration give a direction?

TikTok itself ratcheted up the pressure on Friday night by saying it would be blacked out on Sunday night unless it receives “clearity and assurance.” “The press releases that have come out today from the Biden White House and the Department of Justice have not given the necessary clarity and assurances to the service providers that are essential to continuing to make TikTok available to the 170 million Americans who use it,” the statement, uploaded late on Friday, continued.

“Even a clear statement of non-enforcement policy from the Biden administration today will not address the core requirements of the US providers who need to be convinced that enforcement will not happen tomorrow unless TikTok will be down on January 19.” The app was to originally be banned and removed on Sunday from the apple and google app stores — businesses for could face fines in accordance to the law for distributing tiktok past the given time. That would mean any user who does not already have the app on their phones could not get it while existing users could keep using whatever insecure version was released until the app became buggy or stopped responding.

Why Tiktok is getting banned ?

The main complaint against TikTok is that the social network is potentially dangerous for the United States as a state. TikTok officials say the company has not shared the data of its US users with the Chinese government and no such data was requested, but US officials have been concerned that the Chinese government could force TikTok or its owner, the ByteDance, to give over the data of the users in the US and use it for intelligence or propaganda purposes.

As of to date, there is no confirmation that that has happened. Nevertheless, some policymakers and security specialists have claimed that it is possible due to the China ‘s national security laws – pointing at a grain of sand that can be seen as threat in the broader context of anti-China narratives related to trade, human rights or authoritarianism. Those concerns were revived in a 2022 report which alleged that Chinese employees had illegally accessed US users information. TikTok has refuted this report.

And in the last couple of years, the company explains it altered how it is dealing with personal data of users from the US: such information is stored in a number of American servers belonging to Oracle – a technology giant from the Silicon Valley. Biden in April endorsed a bill that set the platform to be sold to a new owner who is not based in China or be banned in the United States.

The law to ban TikTok found support across party affiliations since the US House of Representatives passed it with a 360-58 vote. Republican leadership in the House linked the TikTok bill to financing for the Ukrainian arms and the Iron Dome missile shield in Israel, forcing the Senate to accept or reject the whole measure. It was then rushed through the Senate and only took less than a week from the lower chamber before it was passed. All executive branch employees were banned from using TikTok in their workplaces, and Biden administration asked everyone to delete TikTok from their phones within one month in February 2023.

How to retrieve your TikTok information ?

You can also ask for consideration of your TikTok data request, which could include your username, the contents you’ve viewed, the comments you left and your privacy settings. But, TikTok notes that not all data may be downloaded, “, especially if it interferes with others’ privacy,” as the company put it in their support center.

To get your TikTok information, go to Settings in profile, open the Menu, and go to Account. Choose “Download your data” to select which data you wish to include in your downloadable file and pick a file format: TXT or JSON. Finally, tap “Request data.” Once you have made the request, TikTok will gather your data and put them into a data file that can be downloaded from inside the app The company noted that it takes a few days to prepare the file, but it will send a message once when it is ready for download. Due to the possible ban coming this Sunday, we recommend doing this as soon as possible. When your file is prepared, click on download in the app. It’ll be available for four days at most.