Last year, the United States Congress passed a law that can force TikTok's China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell its United States operation or face a nationwide ban.
ByteDance's ties to China were considered a national security risk if user data was shared with the Chinese government.
The US media is saying the fate of the app and its 170million American users hangs in the balance as the United States Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of the law.
If it is upheld and the company does not sell its US operation by January 19, TikTok’s days in the country will be numbered.
It will become illegal for US internet hosting services and app stores to distribute TikTok.
TikTok users who already have the app on mobile devices will still have access to it, but they will be unable to update the app, which will likely become unusable over time.
University of Otago media, film and communication lecturer Dr Olivier Jutel said from its origin, the internet was a "geopolitical weapon" and "soft power tool" that US companies, the state and intelligence apparatus had used to influence politics, how we do business, our markets, marketing and advertising.
He believed one of the reasons the US government wanted to shut down TikTok was because they believed it was being used to manipulate young Americans.
"It's very sort of like 1950s Cold War, Manchurian Candidate and J. Edgar Hoover in the midst of this sort of anti-communist panic.
"I'm actually kind of shocked in the year 2025 that people are buying that.
"We've seen in the Australian Senate a senator saying we should ban [Chinese-made] BYD cars because China's going to car-hack us and kill our citizens.
"We're really in the midst of an insane Cold War hysteria."
Another reason for the shutdown attempt was to protect US platforms and digital companies, he said.
"If you look at the largest companies in the world, six out of seven are software companies.
"Meta [the owner of Facebook] has got a trillion-dollar market cap, and that is a company that emerged hand-in-glove with the support of American regulators and the American national security apparatus.
"They get to effectively pressure the US government to shut down a competitor that has a product that young people like, for whatever reason.
"[Meta chief executive Mark] Zuckerberg has been lobbying — he lobbied the first Trump administration — for this kind of action."
Dr Jutel said another reason for the shutdown attempt was because TikTok did not "play ball" in the way "the American empire" expected of US social media companies.
They were expected to support American values, and the government intelligence and military apparatus.
But over the past few years, there had been many postings on TikTok about the Israel-Palestine conflict — most of it supporting Palestine, he said.
"The Israel lobby was furious about how much coverage Palestine and Gaza was getting on TikTok.
"That helped push it [the new law] over the line.
"Basically, TikTok cut against the grain on this particular issue, and is seen as a Chinese interest that undermines American national security."
However, he said there was no "weird Chinese communist battle, secret dark death star of manipulation, or anything like that" in TikTok.
Despite being Chinese-owned, TikTok’s servers were based in Texas, and any data from the servers was available on the public data market.
Dr Jutel said if TikTok was banned, it would create a monopoly for other apps, such as YouTube and Instagram Reels, that were trying to copy TikTok.
