On January 19th, 2025, TikTok users were shocked to find that when they attempted to open the app, they were met with this message:
“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’s in office. Please stay tuned.”
For background on the situation, in 2020, President Donald Trump proposed a TikTok ban because he believed that the data being collected by the app was not stored securely, which he viewed as a national security threat. In August of that year, Trump signed an executive order requiring ByteDance (the company that owns TikTok) to become completely transparent about how data is used and where it was stored. However, this order was blocked due to a temporary court injunction. Later, in 2021, the Biden administration reversed this executive order.
Returning to the present ban, the app was only offline for 14 hours before it was reinstated. On President Trump’s first day in office, he addressed the situation, announcing that TikTok was granted a 75-day grace period from the U.S. ban. This grace period allows for two potential solutions: either a U.S. company must purchase ByteDance within the next 75 days, or ByteDance must agree to Trumps terms.
Trump stated “ Then if I do the deal [to keep TikTok unbanned], I think the U.S. should get half of TikTok.” Trump believes that since a large percentage of TikTok users come from the United States, the country should be entitled to half of the platform. Trump also indicated that if ByteDance refused to comply, he would interpret this as an act of “hostility.”
The future of TikTok hinges on either the purchase of ByteDance by a U.S. company or ByteDance agreeing to give 50% if TikTok to the United States to avoid the ban.
