On Wednesday, April 24th, President Biden signed a law in order to ban a Chinese-owned app called TikTok unless they are sold within a year. The reason is mostly because of the intensifying tech war America has with China. But don’t be concerned users of TikTok, there will be plenty of time left before it could be sold, and will likely cause months of delay. ByteDance (a parent company of TikTok) must sell the app in 12 months under the threat of being shut down. This feature in the law passed falls under the bill providing aid for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.

In 2017, Chinese company ByteDance purchased a karaoke app called Music.Ly. They turned the app into TikTok, and, ever since then, the USA was skeptical of the Chinese Government’s potential influence over the app. Despite the government’s concerns, TikTok’s use skyrocketed with over 170 million users in the US alone.

After Biden signed the bill, Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s CEO, expressed his confidence that TikTok would win in court. “Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” Chew said. “The facts and the Constitution are on our side and we expect to prevail again.”

Overall, the app will not be banned until the court subsides, and may not at all if ByteDance wins. But if they happen to not win, TikTok will be banned within the year. The Ban would greatly impact the users and their use of social media, whether for the positive or negative.