GREAT FALLS — Reporter Owen Skornik-Hayes reports on college students in Great Falls bracing for the shutdown of TikTok’s servers in the U.S. shared their thoughts on the app’s ban.
“It's disappointing. It's like my favorite app. I use it every day,” says Michael Wright, a basketball player at the University of Providence.
Wright says he uses TikTok to post highlights and connect with friends. Another Providence student, Jaden Ruiz-Chevis, says TikTok is her main outlet for news and current events.
“I don't read the newspapers,” says Ruiz-Chevis. “Like that's just not a part of my daily living. Whereas TikTok is how I am informed about things that are going on in other parts of the world.”
The app is slated to be shut down on Sunday, January 19th. The White House releasing a statement on Friday, saying President Biden would not be enforcing the ban, instead he’s left it up to incoming President Donald Trump and his transition team.
Trump took to Truth Social in a post saying, “The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation.”
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of upholding the ban 9-0. Citing national security concerns, all nine Supreme Court justices said those concerns and implications outweighed the First Amendment arguments that TikTok made before that court just a week ago. The app would likely return if Chinese-affiliated company ByteDance were to sell.
Of course, the ban could have major ramifications for the business economy as Providence student, Dutch Teders pointed out.
“A lot of businesses that may have started up on TikTok, and that's like their only platform. I feel like that really hurts them,” he says.
In Montana, 8,000 businesses actively use TikTok. 59% of small businesses in Montana say that TikTok is critical to their business. The same percentage agree that their business needs to use and improve upon TikTok marketing content in order to stay competitive. With a ban looming, many users have switched to similar social media app Rednote, ironically owned by a Chinese company.
Users with TikTok downloaded will still be able to access the app, but service providers will be barred from supporting it and as the app stops receiving updates it will become unusable. Any service provider found to be hosting TikTok servers can be fined up to $5,000 per person on-site.
