The Aftermath of India’s TikTok Ban Holds Lessons for the U.S.

TikTok now has 53 days to figure out a deal to keep it alive in the U.S.—otherwise it will have to go dark again under a law passed last year. While President Donald Trump delayed enforcement of that law until early April and has signaled he wants to find a way for TikTok to stay in the U.S., it’s worth looking at what happened to the video app’s staff and users in India, which banned TikTok nearly five years ago.

To get a sense of the fallout, I’ve been speaking with employees who worked at TikTok at the time. The bottom line: TikTok staff in India got to hang on to their jobs for a while. And TikTok’s biggest U.S. rivals took home the spoils.