How a US TikTok ban could clobber the pro-Palestine movement – and hurt Joe Biden’s election chances

Before last October, Awa's TikTok account was devoted to pleasant things: fashion, for instance, and her favourite places to visit in New York City where she lives.

Then the current Israel-Hamas war began, and Awa's profile became one of a new wave of pro-Palestinian activism galvanised by the wildly popular short-form video app.

"It has woken up the entire nation," the 26-year-old, known on TikTok as Sincerely Awa, told The Independent.

"We have had Palestinian activists in this country doing their best to bring up the truth, and they have always, for the past 75 years, been suppressed by the mainstream media...

"TikTok has made us be able to reach so many people across the nation, to understand what is truly happening to these people – that they are in an occupation, that they are in a genocide."

Now TikTok itself is under threat after the US House in the United States .