(NewsNation) — Talks between TikTok and the U.S. government have been going on for a while now, involving not only the Donald Trump White House but the Joe Biden administration as well.

The former and current presidents both want the app’s Chinese owners to sell their stakes to Americans. When Trump administration officials sought to force a sale, though, it was halted by federal courts.

Now, though, the Biden administration has explicitly threatened to put a national ban on TikTok if it does not divest from Chinese internet company ByteDance.

But what would a ban actually look like for users?

There’s a possibility TikTok would disappear from all app stores, for one thing.

However, Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University, says there is no clear-cut timeline for this happening.

“This is not something that’s a done deal,” Chander said. “No president has, essentially, the power to say this foreign publisher is gone with the wave of their hand.”

It is likely that a ban would be stuck in litigation for years.

If it did go into effect and the app stores lost their contracts with TikTok, the platform would be unable to conduct any updates. This means it would potentially stop working on any device that already has it downloaded. And if the app detected a U.S. IP address, it would block users.
This could lead to a financial loss for the company.

“Advertisers could not buy services, cannot buy advertising on the app, which means that there would be no money to support TikTok’s operations,” Chander said.

TikTok has said that a forced sale would not address any perceived security concerns. The company’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, is set to testify before Congress next week.