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 On Sunday, January 19, Apple will need to remove TikTok from the U.S. App Store, because the app will be officially banned in the United States. On the 19th, app distributors and websites will be prohibited from distributing, maintaining, or updating the TikTok app, though the app itself could continue to function on devices where it has already been downloaded. TikTok has said, however, that it plans to shut down the app when the ban begins.
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Unless the app is sold by its China-based parent company, federal law banning the app will be upheld.
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Technically, this counts as compliance with the law in a "you are free to leave" sort of way. But not for lack of trying to get around it. As Ars Technica reports, the New York law requiring internet service providers to offer plans as cheap as $15 per month to qualifying low-income households was actually put on the books way back in 2021. Lobbyists for AT&T and other ISPs sued, lost, and appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case and effectively punted the ruling down to a previous loss.
New York began enforcing its Affordable Broadband Act earlier this week, at which point AT&T pulled its home wireless broadband out of the state completely. "New York's broadband law imposes harmful rate regulations that make it uneconomical for AT&T to invest in and expand our broadband infrastructure in the state," it said in a statement to Ars. Other internet service providers appear to be staying, at least for the moment. AT&T is able to so quickly withdraw New York service because it's entirely wireless, built off the back of its existing mobile phone infrastructure.
Cell phone service will not be affected, and those who have AT&T hardware for 5G home internet will graciously be allowed to keep their now-useless boxes at no extra charge.
The Affordable Broadband Act requires
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Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube are getting ready to welcome TikTok users, as the Supreme Court upheld a law that effectively bans the Chinese-owned app from the United States.
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