Once the ban takes effect, will TikTok stop working?

Even if the ban goes forward, that doesn’t mean TikTok just stops working, nor will the app be automatically deleted from your phone.

If you already have the app on your phone, you can continue to scroll and upload content. However, the app will no longer be available to download in the U.S. from Apple’s App Store or Google Play Store, and you won’t be able to install updates, including security upgrades or bug fixes, past the version of the app you have as of Jan. 18.

Since ByteDance will no longer be able to push out updates, the app will become increasingly hard to use, if not unusable right away.

“The apps will start to decay and rot,” Internet Society technologist Joseph Lorenzo Hall told Wired, “as either services stop working, things like content distribution networks or services who feel like they can’t take the risks of the ambiguous nature of the language, or the potential enforcement by the incoming administration.”