Despite the ban, TikTok did just fine in expanding around the world, while national and international tech companies rushed to fill the Indian void, in the process transforming th

India’s 2020 crackdown helped give rise to Instagram Reels, which has largely replaced it there. But TikTok has proved more resilient elsewhere.

TikTok fans in the U.S. are racing to secure alternatives and safeguard their digital empires ahead of a looming shutdown, evoking the chaos of India's 2020 ban that erased the app from the lives of 200 million users overnight.

But the law’s seeming fragility, with an incoming president already scheming to unravel it, highlights something else just as clearly: How few tools American leaders have available to address the risks of online content.

Questions loom over TikTok's future after a U.S. ban went into effect Saturday. Do workarounds like VPNs work? Will it come back? What we know so far.