By Koa Davidson

As the clock approached midnight on January 18th, TikTok, a Chinese based social media app shut down access to the site in the United States. 12 hours later, it was back.  

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was passed by congress on April 24th, 2024; the law gave President Biden the authority to identify apps which posed a threat to American national security and give them 270 days to divest to an American company. Tiktok resisted as much as they could, stating their refusal to sell the company and intentions to challenge the law in the Supreme Court. The court upheld the ban two days before the deadline to sell to an American company. In spite of this, the Biden Administration stated that it had no intentions of actually enforcing the ban as Donald Trump’s inauguration was only a day after the deadline.  

Still, TikTok chose to go out on their own terms; their parent company, ByteDance shut down all in-app services themselves in the United States. It is worth noting that TikTok was not the only app ByteDance had in the US market; the editing software CapCut and the mobile games Marvel Snap and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, among others were also shut down.  

The day of the shutdown however, then President-Elect Trump, despite originally attempting to ban TikTok in the U.S. in 2020, showed interest in allowing the continued operation of TikTok once assuming office. In response to this, ByteDance released a message to those who opened the app stating: “We are fortunate President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!” Surely enough, once Trump was sworn in, he instated an executive order extending TikTok’s days of operation. Although, with the caveat that they are expected to lessen the Chinese influence over the app. Trump has suggested that he would be willing to compromise with ByteDance and settle for a 50 percent “U.S. owned” stake in TikTok. It is unclear if by U.S. owned Trump means for a private firm based in America to have a 50 percent share or if the United States Government itself would own the half. 

Even though TikTok’s services are still available in the U.S. Apple’s App Store and Android’s Play Store have both removed TikTok from their collection. This means that if the social media has been deleted, it can not be downloaded via those two apps. Android users are still able to download the app, but they would have to download an APK file from a third-party website, which runs the risk of accidentally downloading malware disguised as the app.

Graphic made by Ryder Navarra