We lost Tiktok for the entirety of 14 hours before it was promptly brought back.
On Jan. 18, a few hours before midnight, every user in the U.S. got the same message when they opened the popular social media app: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!” But many people do not know the ban was initiated by President Donald Trump himself back in his first presidential term in 2020.
After TikTok’s predecessor Musical.ly was bought by the Chinese company ByteDance and made into TikTok, it grew from a teenage-exclusive way of communication into a global network with incredible influence. It is used by billions of people, which in turn means TikTok wields great political influence and power.
The first attempt to ban TikTok was made in 2020 by Trump himself because of “Chinese influence and national security.” He gave an ultimatum to either sell big parts of the app to a U.S. company or the ban would be enforced after a certain deadline. TikTok even proposed to sell to Oracle or Walmart, but before that became reality, courts blocked the ban temporarily because it might clash with the First Amendment right of free speech.
When President Joe Biden took office at the beginning of 2021, he postponed any ban and ordered reviews of its safety, though concerns remained.
There were many plans and attempts to make TikTok’s operations and handling of users’ information more transparent and secure. Many politicians have even supported any notion in the direction of a ban, but the actual ban itself that was executed at the beginning of this year was only set into motion in March of 2024 when Biden demanded TikTok be sold to a U.S. company. The deadline he set was 9 months. Then, President-elect Trump, in a reversal of his prior stance, requested the Supreme Court delay the ban until he took office. This request was denied and TikTok was, in fact, taken down, but on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to extend the deadline for TikTok for another 75 days.
Though TikTok regained function after less than a day and reappeared on the app store on Feb. 13, its future is to be decided before the new 75-day deadline runs out once again on April 5.
