The Supreme Court is weighing whether a law that could ban TikTok in the United States is constitutional.
Away from the court, legal and technology experts are pondering a different head-scratcher: What if TikTok is banned and people keep using it anyway?
The law that could force a ban on TikTok as soon as Jan. 19 is vague on how it would be enforced. Some experts say that even if TikTok is actually banned this month or soon, there may be so many legal and technical loopholes that millions of Americans could find ways to keep TikTok'ing.
The law is "Swiss cheese with lots of holes in it," said Glenn Gerstell, a former top lawyer at the National Security Agency and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy research organization. "There are obviously ways around it."
That's not how TikTok's attorney described it to the Supreme Court justices. "We shut down" if the ban goes into effect, Noel Francisco said Friday.
Just over a week from a possible blacklisting, it's wild that there is so much uncertainty about how a TikTok ban would work. The confusion shows how unusual a nationwide product ban is in the United States, particularly for something that exists within the internet's slippery borders.
Here's how a TikTok ban might be enforced, if it happens at all, and the legal ways that people could work around it.
WHAT THE TIKTOK BAN LAW SAYS - AND DOESN'T SAY
When other countries ban apps, the government typically orders internet providers and mobile carriers to block web traffic to and from the blocked website or app.
That's probably not how a ban on TikTok in the United States would work.
Two lawyers who reviewed the law said the text as written doesn't appear to order internet and mobile carriers to stop people from using TikTok.
There may not be unanimity on this point. Some lawyers who spoke to Bloomberg News said internet providers would be in legal hot water if they let their customers continue to use a banned TikTok.
Alan Rozenshtein, a University of Minnesota associate law professor, said he suspected internet providers aren't obligated to stop TikTok use "because Congress wanted to allow the most dedicated TikTok users to be able to access the app, so as to limit the First Amendment infringement."
The law also doesn't order Americans to stop using TikTok if it's banned or to delete the app from our phones.
The law does say that if TikTok is banned, mobile app stores - that's Apple and Google, mostly - will be obligated to stop making TikTok available from their stores in the United States. Otherwise they'd rack up mammoth fines.
The law also says "internet hosting providers" must stop supporting TikTok if it is banned. Most lawyers say that probably refers to the companies that provide back-end computer horsepower or equipment.
I've contacted large internet providers and cellphone carriers, and most of them didn't comment on the topic.
THE POTENTIAL WAYS TO KEEP USING TIKTOK IF IT'S BANNED
Odds are that if the Supreme Court declares the TikTok law constitutional and if a ban goes into effect, blacklisting the app from the Apple and Google app stores will be enough to stop most people from using TikTok.
But for people dedicated to TikTok, the law and technology would allow for ways to keep using it, including options like those listed below. (TikTok didn't respond to a request for comment.)
--Keep using the app that's already on your phone.If a ban goes into effect and Apple and Google block TikTok from pushing updates to the app on your phone, it may become buggy or broken over time.
But no one is quite sure how long it would take for the TikTok app to become unusable or compromised in this situation.
--Use a VPN. A virtual private network, or VPN, is software that can make it appear as though you're surfing The Washington Post website from Stockholm when you're really in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
When the social media site X was (briefly) banned by Brazil's government last year, sign-ups to Proton VPN surged 1,200 percent in the country in a single day, the Swiss email and VPN company said at the time.
Antonio Cesarano, product lead for Proton VPN, said this week that he believed - though he wasn't positive - that Americans could use VPNs to access TikTok if it's banned.
--Download the TikTok app outside the app stores.It's not easy, but it is possible in some cases to download smartphone apps from places other than the Apple and Google app stores. Those methods could become a model for TikTok if a ban goes into effect.
The Fortnite mobile video games have been blacklisted since 2020 from the Apple and Google app stores because of a business dispute. But this past summer, Fortnite owner Epic Games made its games available from an app that you can download from the Epic Games website to Android phones globally and to iPhones in the European Union.
About six weeks later, Epic Games said there were more than 10 million downloads of the app outside the Apple and Google app stores.
Epic Games declined to give an updated figure for its app downloads.
--Use TikTok's website instead of its app:TikTok was designed to be used as an app, but you can still watch videos from TikTok.com on your mobile browser or from a computer.
Assuming internet providers and mobile carriers don't block TikTok's website in the United States, TikTok could make its website more of a full-featured alternative to its app.