Around 12 hours after shutting itself down in the United States, TikTok is
back for many users almost like it never left, attributing its return to a
move by President-elect Donald Trump to save the app.
The whiplash move to bring the app back comes after TikTok became
unusable for Americans late Saturday night. Users who tried to open the
app at that time were met with a message saying it was offline and asking users to “stay
tuned.”
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that
means you can’t use TikTok for now,” TikTok’s message read in part. The app was also unavailable on the Apple and Google Play stores, along
with Lemon8 and CapCut, which are also owned by TikTok’s
China-based parent company, ByteDance.
Early on Sunday, Trump said he would issue an executive order following
his inauguration on Monday to delay enforcement of the divest-or-ban law.
And within hours, access to TikTok’s app and webpage began to return for
US users.
TikTok’s restoration will be welcome news for the app’s 170 million
American users, many of whom use the app for hours every day to find news,
entertainment and community and, in some cases, to make a living, after
weeks of uncertainty.
And it signaled that Trump may be poised to score a major political
victory by claiming responsibility for bringing back the popular
platform. In a statement midday Sunday, TikTok said Trump’s promise to save the app
allowed it to restore US users’ access even before his expected executive
order is signed.
“In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of
restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary
clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no
penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7
million small businesses to thrive,” the company said in a statement. “We
will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in
the United States.”
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s “Make America Great
Again Victory Rally” in Washington, DC, Sunday night, before being seated
prominently at the incoming president’s inauguration Monday.
But while TikTok’s shutdown lasted just a few hours, securing the app’s
long-term future in the United States is likely to be more
complicated.
The path to securing TikTok’s future
Trump said Sunday in a Truth Social post that he plans to issue an
executive order following his inauguration on Monday to “extend the period
of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a
deal to protect our national security.”
He urged TikTok’s partners to allow the app to be restored, saying “the
order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company
that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”
“Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as
other events and conversations,” Trump said.
Trump had said he was considering a 90-day extension in the ban to give
him time to work out a deal to sell the app to a non-Chinese owner. In his
post, Trump said he would seek a 50-50 joint venture between TikTok’s
existing parent company, China-based ByteDance, and a new,
American owner.
Such an announcement could serve as a kind of immediate political victory
for Trump with America’s youth. Although Trump supported a TikTok ban in
his first term as president, he has recently said he wants to keep the app
alive — posting on Truth Social Sunday morning: “SAVE TIKTOK!” Last month, he asked the Supreme Court to stay the law so his incoming administration could work out a
deal to keep TikTok available to Americans. The Supreme Court upheld the law on Friday.
TikTok appealed to Trump in its pop-up message on the app starting late
Saturday night notifying users that the app was unavailable in the United
States.
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work
with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” the
company posted in its pop-up message. “Please stay tuned!”
And Chew also lauded Trump in a video responding to the company’s Supreme
Court loss on Friday, saying, “we are grateful and pleased to have the
support of a president who truly understands our platform, one who has
used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with
the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the
process.”
Trump attributed his election victory in part to TikTok at a press
conference at Mar-a-Lago in December.
“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said, then claiming to
have won the youth vote by a significant margin. “And there are those that
say that TikTok had something to do with it.”
The law banning TikTok passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress,
citing national security concerns. Although a Pew Research Center Survey in 2023 found about half of Americans supported the ban, it has
consistently proven unpopular with younger generations.
With his executive order, Trump is expected to delay enforcement of the
ban to give TikTok parent company ByteDance more time to find an American
owner.
Trump’s Sunday message may have been enough to reassure TikTok’s
technology partners, including Oracle, which hosts TikTok’s content in the
United States, and Apple and Google, which host the app on their app
stores, to continue supporting the app. Under the law, those companies
could face penalties of up to $5,000 per person who has access to TikTok,
if it is enforced.
Not a permanent solution
But the executive order could face challenges, including from members of
Trump’s own party, who say they oppose any extension of the ban.
“We commend Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft for following the law and
halting operations with ByteDance and TikTok, and we encourage other
companies to do the same,” Republican Senators Tom Cotton, of Arkansas,
and Pete Ricketts, of Nebraska, wrote in a joint statement Sunday. “The
law, after all, risks ruinous bankruptcy for any company who violates it.
Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of
‘extension’ of its effective date.”
Cotton and Ricketts said TikTok should only come back online by “severing
all ties between TikTok and Communist China. Only then will Americans be
protected from the grave threat posed to their privacy and security by a
communist-controlled TikTok.”
The app’s brief blackout marked the realization of a yearslong effort to
block US access to TikTok over national security concerns related to its
China-based owner ByteDance. Outgoing President Joe Biden
signed a law last April that gave ByteDance 270 days to sell TikTok to an owner from the
United States or one of its allies or face a ban.
So even if Trump pledges to reverse the ban, he can’t simply undo a law
passed by Congress and signed by a president with an executive
order.
That’s why TikTok shut down in the first place. Despite the Biden
administration all but saying they would defer enforcement to the incoming
Trump administration, a person close to TikTok says “multiple critical
service providers” indicated to TikTok that they were concerned that the
ban might be enforced starting Sunday.
For example, Apple released a statement Sunday that cited the ban as its reason for removing TikTok from
its app store. It noted the app will remain available for customers who
already downloaded it, but it won’t be able to be redownloaded if
deleted.
“Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it
operates,” the company said in its statement. “Pursuant to the Protecting
Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps
developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok,
CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or
updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January
19, 2025.”
The long-term fix
The only truly permanent solutions to keep TikTok online appear to be: 1)
pass a new law reversing the old one — no easy task, considering that the
existing bill had such broad bipartisan support in Congress — or 2) force
a sale to an acceptable buyer.
Two potential buyers — a group led by billionaire Frank McCourt and “Shark Tank’s” Kevin O’Leary, as well as AI search engine PerplexityAI — have submitted formal bids
for the app and others have reportedly shown interest in TikTok.
ByteDance, however, has long been adamant that it has no intention of
selling. TikTok’s near-magical algorithm, keeping users hooked on the app,
is its secret power, and putting a price tag on such a valuable commodity,
envied by every other social media app, is difficult.
McCourt’s buyer group has said it would buy TikTok’s US assets without
the algorithm and rebuild the app, but tech giants like Meta and YouTube
have for years worked to replicate TikTok’s popular algorithm without
quite succeeding. O’Leary told CNN he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago earlier
this month to discuss the outlook for the app.
Spinning off an American-only version of TikTok could also mean the rest
of the world has to download a new app to access US users’ content.
Yet Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported last week that China is weighing a sale — to Elon Musk.
Musk may have the resources to buy the app, and he’s a major Trump
supporter and about to take a quasi-role in his government. But it’s
unclear that he would want to, and he has not publicly commented directly
on the acquisition reports.
On Sunday, Musk posted on X that he opposes the TikTok ban “because it goes against freedom of
speech.”
“That said, the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in
America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced. Something
needs to change,” Musk said.
If ByteDance chooses to engage, Trump could perhaps argue that
significant progress has been made on a deal — a legal threshold that
would legally permit Trump to reverse the ban to allow the sale process to
commence.
In his Truth Social post Sunday, Trump said the United States should have
“a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.”
“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say
(sic) up,” he said. “Therefore, my initial thought is a joint venture
between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50%
ownership in a joint venture set up between the U.S. and whichever
purchase we so choose.”That’s only a temporary measure, though, as the sale would ultimately need to go through.
Until then, TikTok’s future will remain very much in doubt.
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