TikTok’s bid to overturn a law which would view it banned or sold in the US from early 2025 has been rejected.

The social media business had hoped a federal appeals court would consent with its argument that the law was unconstitutional because it represented a “staggering” impact on the free talk of its 170 million US users.

But the court upheld the law, which it said “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents”.

TikTok says it will now receive its fight to the US Supreme Court, the country’s highest legal authority.

The US wants TikTok sold or banned because of what it says are its owners links to the Chinese state – links TikTok and parent business Bytedance have always denied.

The court agreed the law was “carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader attempt to counter a well-substantiated national safety threat posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China).”

But TikTok said it was not the complete of its legal fight.

“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ correct to free talk, and we expect they will do just that on this significant constitutional issue,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.

They added that the law was based on “inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information” and a ban would censor US citizens.

Donald Trump’s win in the 2024 US Presidential Election may also now a lifeline for the app.

Despite unsuccessfully attempting to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, he said in the run-up to the November elections he would not allow the ban on TikTok to receive result.

Trump will be inaugurated on 20 January – the day after the law says TikTok must be be banned or sold.

However, it remains to be seen whether he will pursue through on his pre-election vow.

Professor James Grimmelmann of Cornell University said the president-elect would be “swimming upstream to provide TikTok a reprieve”.

“The anti-China sentiment in the US Congress is very powerful, so there are now substantial constituencies in both parties that desire TikTok to be restricted from the US trade,” he told BBC information.

The court case has been closely watched both by those who use TikTok- and the app’s rivals.

Tiffany Cianci, a tiny business advocate and TikTok creator, said she was “not shocked” by Friday’s selection – but told BBC information she would not be shifting her TikTok content or presence to the platform’s rivals, such as Instagram.

“I’m not going to do what they desire and receive my content to their platforms where it’s not as successful where it’s more likely to be censored, where I am more likely to have less control over my spectators,” she said.

Nonetheless, other platforms are positioning themselves for a post-TikTok social media landscape.

Meta, which owns Facebook as well as Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, has sought to construct rivals to TikTok’s short form videos within its own apps, and made changes that users have likened to TikTok amid questions over the app’s US upcoming.

Jasmine Enberg, loan amount analyst at eMarketer, said there would be “major upheaval” if a TikTok appeal were to fall short at the Supreme Court and a ban was enforced.

She said this would be “benefitting Meta, YouTube and Snap, while hurting content creators and tiny businesses that depend on the app to make a living.”

But TikTok won’t be easily recreated, said Cory Johnson, Chief trade Strategist at Epistrophy financing Research. Johnson said deep learning models power TikTok’s recommendation engine.

“Enabling such complicated AI and large data processing at TikTok’s immense scale requires a colossal and expensive technical infrastructure,” Johnson said.

He said TikTok’s hyper-targeting and China’s data laws pose significant risks, and pointed to Elon Musk’s alterations to algorithms at his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, as a cautionary account.

In the run-up to the U.S. election, Musk’s political posts received more views than all U.S. political campaign ads on X’s disclosure dataset, Johnson said.

“We have very real and very recent encounter in America with a social media network tweaking its algorithms to favor sure voices,” he added.