After hearing oral arguments a week ago, the Supreme Court upheld the ban at the heart of TikTok v. Garland on Friday morning. In an unsigned, unanimous opinion, the justices were unconvinced that a ban of TikTok in the U.S. was a violation of First Amendment rights.

Whatever happens next, a major shift in the U.S. social media landscape is occurring as we speak. In this special edition newsletter, we’ll outline possible next steps that could be taken as early as this weekend to stall or neutralize the impact of the TikTok ban, revisit why the federal government is targeting TikTok, and offer a glimpse into what a sudden blackout might look like.

The bill—which was part of a larger package that provided aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan—passed through a normally divided Senate on a 79-18 vote. The U.S. government has long held that its decision to push Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American buyer is a matter of national security. 

As Forbes’ Emily Baker-White writes, foreign governments have historically run operations to try to influence American citizens. Legislators argue that the Chinese government could use TikTok to contort Americans’ discourse, eroding their trust in the democratic systems that define American politics.

Policy experts have also been concerned about ByteDance’s seemingly sloppy handling of data. Last February, Forbes reported that the Chinese parent company had no internal corporate records retention policy, which goes against laws in both the U.S. and EU.

The TikTok law is an unprecedented attempt by Congress to directly regulate a social media platform for the purpose of limiting such influence campaigns. But, as arguments in front of the Supreme Court last week displayed, the law also raised a key First Amendment question: Can the U.S. government, in trying to stop other governments from manipulating speech, itself manipulate speech by forcing the shutdown of a massively popular platform?

On Friday, the Court said yes, the government can do just that. Justices unanimously ruled that the law does not violate TikTok and its users’ First Amendment rights, noting that the policy is focused on China’s control of the platform and “do[es] not target particular speech based upon its content.” 

A blackout could also come more suddenly. Timothy Edgar, a cybersecurity professor at Brown University, told CBS News that users could “get a notice that says, ‘This service is not available in your country,’” when trying to open the app, adding that similar messaging has been used when other countries have banned online platforms.

If traffic is blocked in such a manner, some users could attempt to use VPNs to mask their location and get around the block—but that won’t fix the app store problem, writes contributor Zak Doffman. Phones assigned to the U.S., even if they appear to be in another country via VPN, won’t be permitted to update by Google or Apple. Over time, a lack of such updates could pose a major security risk while using the outdated app.

Ahead of a possible shutdown, Doffman urges TikTok users to take action now and secure their accounts before the deadline, including updating passwords and turning on two-step verification.

The good news: The same law that is forcing ByteDance to either divest or face a TikTok ban gives creators the right to get all their data back.

The bad news: Time is running out, as the right to acquire the data is set to expire Saturday. 

Under the law, TikTok is required to provide users with “all the available data related to the[ir] account[s]” and to transmit the data “in a machine readable format,” which will allow users to repost their videos on other social media platforms.

Need to get your account data from TikTok? Click here and follow the instructions on how to file a request.