TikTok doesn’t seem worried about a US TikTok ban. Why not?

TikTok employees aren’t the only ones acting like they’re not going anywhere. When I was at the Cannes ad festival in June, I kept asking ad buyers what their backup positions would be if TikTok disappeared in a few months. I got a series of shrugs in response. Not because they didn’t care, but because it didn’t seem likely.

Instead, the TikTok-is-here-to-stay crowd seems to be banking on a combination of legal maneuvering or political action to overcome the ban.

You can see their logic: TikTok lawyers are fighting the alleged ban on First Amendment grounds and are making oral arguments in their case next week. At the very least, they’re hoping for an ordinance that pushes that January deadline back a few months.

And “company leaders also believe there is a possibility that TikTok could negotiate a solution with the next presidential administration, but wait until after the U.S. election in November,” Kaya Yurieff and Juro Osawa report.

The second option seems harder to achieve because the law forcing TikTok owners to hand over the app or shut down is, you know, a law. Approved by Congress, signed by the President and everything.

Still, it doesn’t appear to be a law that occupies much space in American politics right now.

You don’t hear either the Trump or Harris presidential campaigns talking about a TikTok ban — instead, both candidates’ campaigns are embracing the app through their own accounts and proxies. And now, only a third of Americans support a ban, compared to half the country in 2023, according to Pew Research.

The TikTok-isn’t-going-anywhere mentality may be a misjudgment — just as it was when the TikTok ban bill first arrived earlier this year.

But in any case, we’re in an extraordinary time: one of the country’s most popular services could theoretically disappear in a matter of months – and you won’t hear a peep about it.