TikTok loses its ban appeal

• TikTok lost it's appeal against it's impending January ban.

• It now falls on either the Supreme Court or President-elect Trump to save the app.

One of Donald Trump’s campaign promises was to save TikTok from its impending ban. 

Now, we’ll see if he was serious about that.

That’s because TikTok just unanimously lost its appeal against a new law that requires parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok from China by January 19th or face a ban. 

TikTok argued that the law unfairly targeted the app and violated the First Amendment. The judges begged to differ, saying the law was “carefully crafted to deal with only control by a foreign adversary.” 

Basically, the judges told TikTok to shut up and go back to the auction market.

So, as it stands, TikTok’s options are:

• Appeal to the Supreme Court, who may or may not take the case.

• Hope that Trump saves them by not enforcing the law.

• Hope that Congress repeals the law, which is extremely unlikely considering how bipartisan the initial vote was.

None of those options seem particularly appealing for TikTok, and the betting markets seem to agree, as the odds TikTok is banned before May 2025 has shot up to 47% on Polymarket.

And it appears that indie hackers are already preparing for the inevitable shift to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. 

It’ll likely be a while until this all plays out, but right now, things have never looked so bad for TikTok.