• TikTok might go away. (Or not? Probably not? Who knows!)
• Whatever its fate, TikTok changed how people consume and post to social media.
• The TikTokification of American life isn't going anywhere — even if the app disappears.

Even if TikTok goes away, part of it will be with us forever: It's impossible to erase the TikTokification of the entire internet — or the effect the app has had on, well, everything.

Sure, there are several possibilities now that the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban: One possibility is that TikTok actually goes away in the US on Sunday, existing in history as a strange several-year blip — replaced by either incumbent apps like Instagram and YouTube Shorts, or something new. (RedNote? Probably not, but who knows!)

In the last week, when things were looking pretty dire for TikTok, I started talking to colleagues about what TikTok actually meant — what its legacy meant. And we all realized that, essentially, there were almost no aspects of American life that had been untouched by TikTok. OK, well maybe not EVERYTHING — I'm being a little dramatic here, but it's very easy to rattle off a bunch of industries and corners of culture that were massively changed by TikTok.

Book publishing is one of the perfect examples of a fusty old thing — an industry that's existed for centuries and one that you'd think would be threatened by people's free time being sucked up by a video app. But instead, BookTok became this juggernaut force for selling and marketing books.

The beauty industry, homebuying, restaurants, the customization of Starbucks drinks, the music industry, sorority recruitment — all changed by TikTok.

Still, those various activities had already been disrupted by social media platforms that came before TikTok: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter — even MySpace. But TikTok represented something even more — an entire cultural shift.

TikTok changed us to the online core

As someone who has spent most of my career trying to observe how people act online, I've come to believe there are a few things about TikTok that have changed humans on an almost molecular level. It's changed the way we interact online — which is much bigger than just how lipstick is marketed.

TikTok's algorithmic feed upended all that we had previously understood or enjoyed about social media.

Social media has long been about followers and a direct relationship with the person whose content you're viewing. Before TikTok, follower count was important — and it was rare that a single post would go viral on its own.

TikTok flipped this completely.

It's almost hard to remember now that most other social apps have copied TikTok's "For you page," but this way of organizing your feed was new and almost confusing at first.

Sure, there were still some big creators who had massive followings, but there was a democratization of virality: Suddenly, every high school had a kid who had gone viral at least once on TikTok.

As TikTok grew to be more than just teens dancing, it became understood to everyone using it that if you posted, there was a chance lots of strangers might see your content — even if you weren't a big influencer or famous person. Almost Warholian — in the future, everyone will get 10,000 views on a random TikTok post. "I didn't expect my last post to blow up," is one of the most common intros to a TikTok you'll see.

As people accepted the idea that you might actually be perceived by others on the app, something strange happened. Instead of an Instagram effect where people felt pressure to look their best and put forth an idealized version of their life, people — especially young women — were more willing than I'd ever seen before on social media to post images of themselves looking, uh, not-so-perfect. Lying in bed with unbrushed hair, no makeup, unflattering angles — things you'd never, ever see on Pinterest or Instagram. As a millennial woman raised on Instagram, I admired Gen Z's daring to look like crap on the internet — it was refreshing and honest.

Those changes are here to stay, no matter whether TikTok shuts down for a day, or forever, or is saved by some executive order.

TikTok uncorked something in the way we consume and the way we post — and that's not going back in the bottle.

• The Supreme Court upheld a law that could see TikTok shut down on Sunday.
• Or maybe it won't shut down?
• There's lots of confusing and contradictory information out there. Here's what we know.

TikTok is shutting down in the US on Sunday.

Or maybe TikTok won't get shut down because Joe Biden or Donald Trump will save it before then.

Or maybe TikTok will get shut down on Sunday, and then Trump will restart it a day or two later.

Confused? Me too. It's possible things will get easier to understand in the near future. They could also remain opaque for some time.

But let's try to sort out where things stand right now — again, with the caveat that this could all change soon.

The law and TikTok

The one thing we know for sure: Last year, Congress passed a bill, signed into law by Biden, that required ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell its US operations to a non-Chinese owner. The deadline for that transaction is this coming Sunday.

Everything after that is at least somewhat fuzzy.

For instance: While the intent of the law is to force ByteDance to sell US TikTok or shut it down, it's not entirely clear what would happen if the law went into effect.

The law requires app stores like the ones run by Apple and Google to stop distributing TikTok, but that doesn't mean TikTok would disappear from your phone. The law also prohibits internet companies from maintaining or updating the app. But it's unclear whether that means TikTok would immediately fall apart, or if it could limp along in some crippled manner.

But last week, an attorney for TikTok told the Supreme Court that the service would go "dark" in the US on Sunday if the law stayed in place. Subsequent press reports said that TikTok planned to simply shut down the service itself on Sunday, hoping that it would create political pressure. The Information reported that TikTok planned on sending users who open the app to a website with information about the ban.

The courts and TikTok

TikTok has spent months trying unsuccessfully to get the law overturned, arguing that it violates the First Amendment. TikTok got a last-ditch hearing before the US Supreme Court last week, but the justices seemed skeptical of its arguments. And on Friday, they upheld the law.

"There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of communication," the court said. "But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok's data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary."

The possible TikTok loophole

The TikTok sell-or-ban law does offer a theoretical reprieve for the app. It says that prior to the Sunday deadline, the president can grant a 90-day extension if there's "significant progress" in place to transfer ownership of US TikTok, including "relevant binding agreements" to make that happen.

But so far, TikTok and its owner have shown no public interest in a sale, and there are no reports that a non-Chinese buyer has a plan in place, let alone a deal.

It's also worth noting that no Big Tech company with the resources to buy and run a company the size of TikTok has shown any interest — in public — to take it on. The only plausible buyer mentioned to date is Elon Musk — Trump's new ally — but that came up only in recent days, via reports that suggested it was a last-minute brainstorm from Chinese officials in Beijing. Musk has remained uncharacteristically mute about the scenario.

The TikTok possible workarounds

This is where the information is by far the fuzziest, and often contradictory.

For instance: Trump, who will become president on Monday, previously tried to push through his own TikTok ban-or-sale effort during his first term in office. But last year, Trump said he thought TikTok should stay in the US — and he's been even more enthusiastic about the app following his reelection.

Last month, Trump's attorneys asked the Supreme Court to push back the January 19 deadline so he could work on the deal once he became president again. And Trump has invited TikTok CEO Shou Chew to attend his inauguration, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider. He's been offered a prime seat for the event — on the dais alongside other important figures, including Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.

Various news reports and analysts have talked about a scenario where Trump brokers a deal between ByteDance and a buyer once he's in office. The law allows for that while keeping the restrictions on TikTok in place until a deal is done.

Under normal circumstances, it would take many days, weeks, or even months to get a complicated deal worth tens of billions of dollars executed. Which would mean TikTok would stay dark, or at least crippled in some way, for some time. But perhaps Trump thinks he can get something done in record time.

And on Friday, Trump said that he had spoken with China's leader, Xi Jinping, about "balancing Trade, Fentanyl, TikTok and many other subjects" and that he expected them to "solve many problems together."

Does the TikTok law just not get enforced?

An alternate scenario you may have read about involves Trump simply overturning the ban via an executive order — a mechanism he has already said he intends to use to reverse other moves Biden made in office.

But the whole point of a law — again, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president — is that it's a law. And it's supposed to be hard to change or modify a law unless the courts weigh in or Congress amends it. So it's very unclear whether an executive order would suffice. (It's worth noting that the Wall Street analyst Rich Greenfield believes that Trump can overturn the law with an executive order, by relying on an argument that gives the president power when it comes to foreign affairs and national security.)

Another scenario recently floated is that Trump could simply tell Pam Bondi, his nominee for attorney general, not to enforce the law — an extraordinary step. Asked about that prospect in her confirmation hearing, Bondi declined to comment. It's also worth considering whether the likes of Apple and Google would follow Trump's theoretical command to ignore the law while it's still on the books.

One last bit of confusion: Members of outgoing President Joe Biden's team, who have been quiet about the looming deadline for weeks, are now trying to figure out a solution themselves, NBC reported Wednesday. "Americans shouldn't expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday," an anonymous administration official told the outlet.

Now press reports indicate that Biden's plan to deal with the ban is to … ignore it for a day, and pass it along to Trump to deal with.

At this point, the only thing we can really tell you with any certainty is that we'll know at least a bit more in the next few days.

• Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai will attend Donald Trump's inauguration.
• That's not a shock — everyone else in tech is going, and Google/Alphabet already announced it was donating $1 million to the event.
• It's most definitely a sign of the times.

The tech contingent heading to Donald Trump's inauguration next week is getting bigger every day: Google CEO Sundar Pichai will be there as well, according to a person familiar with his plans.

Pichai joins a long list of Silicon Valley CEOs who plan to be in Washington when Trump is sworn in, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla's Elon Musk, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Apple CEO Tim Cook will also be in attendance.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Pichai will join as well. Last week, his company announced that it would be making a $1 million donation to Trump's inaugural committee — as many other tech giants have also announced.

It's also worth pointing out that when Trump won his first presidential election in 2016, he also got a gathering of tech CEOs to pay him a visit.

But that trip was to Trump Tower in New York City — before his 2017 inauguration — and most of it was primarily off-camera.

This time around, the whole point is to make sure that everyone knows you're there — and that Donald Trump knows everyone knows.

• A Chinese app known as RedNote is surging with new users from the US.
• I downloaded it and found users posting gleefully about giving away their data to China.
• The frenzy around RedNote might be short-lived, however.

I spent time on the Chinese app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, which Americans are flocking to — a phenomenon that could become even more interesting after the Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban on Friday.

It was an amusing and utterly confusing experience.

The app is flooded with posts deriding the US government when I visited it earlier this week. It seems impossible to parse what's potentially propaganda, what's ironically pretending to be propaganda, and what are earnest complaints about the US government — or earnest welcome messages from Chinese citizens.

What's clear, however, is that many Americans are furious, and they're doing what angry Americans do best from their couches: make memes. One video with over 30,000 likes shows a scene from the movie "Brokeback Mountain" where the two main characters reunite and hug, with the caption, "Me being reunited with my Chinese spy."

Many users joked — using the hashtag "TikTokrefugee" — about giving all their data to the Chinese government. One speculated that RedNote users were being assigned a new Chinese spy to watch them.

My feed, overall, was chock full of dark humor about being fine with giving data to China or using the app "just to say FU to our govt," as one user put it.

Many posts expressed anger toward the US government, or at least joy in what people perceived to be the government's embarrassment when it discovered that young people were signing up for an app that could be even worse of a national security issue than TikTok.

Sure enough, RedNote and Lemon8, an app owned by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, hit the top two spots on the Apple App Store rankings on Monday. I mean, yes, it is pretty funny!

Admittedly, I also chuckled at another genre of memes, about how people would rather sign up for a dubious Chinese app than switch to Instagram Reels. One video I saw showed a cat labeled "Americans" loudly rejecting a cup of yogurt with the Instagram logo on it.

The RedNote frenzy may be short-lived, however. The app is difficult to navigate for English speakers, and some new users have reported it barred them (though it's possible these issues relate to the phone-verification system, which I also found to be buggy).

It's also possible that users are downloading RedNote and other Chinese apps not to replace TikTok but to send a signal to the US government.

"It really is just retaliation towards the government in the simplest way but in a way that feels very native to Gen Z," Meagan Loyst, the founder of the investor collective Gen Z VCs, told my colleagues Dan Whateley and Sydney Bradley.

Who knows what will happen with TikTok after the Supreme Court's ruling. It's likely going to go dark on Sunday, but it could get a reprieve from the incoming Trump administration.

One way or the other, for at least a few days this week, there was some level of cathartic steam being released — the frustration that millions of TikTok users feel that the app they enjoy is likely going away — at least for a little while.