Beginning on Saturday evening, TikTok, the short-form video app owned by the Chinese language firm ByteDance, was unavailable in the USA on account of a new law that banned the corporate’s apps within the nation. By round midday on Sunday, it was again.
Although the regulation calls on ByteDance to promote TikTok to non-Chinese language homeowners or face a ban beginning Sunday, TikTok mentioned it was responding to new “readability” from President-elect Donald J. Trump when it restored service.
Mr. Trump vowed early Sunday to stall the implementation of the ban to offer TikTok extra time to make a sale that might fulfill the regulation. It’s nonetheless not clear how he’ll have the opportunity to take action.
What’s occurring with TikTok this weekend?
TikTok feeds stopped working in the USA late on Saturday evening. As an alternative of movies, the app confirmed a pop-up message to customers that mentioned a regulation banning TikTok was enacted in the USA and that “President Trump has indicated that he’ll work with us on an answer to reinstate TikTok as soon as he takes workplace.” It added, “Please keep tuned!”
Then round midday on Sunday, the app labored once more.
“In settlement with our service suppliers, TikTok is within the strategy of restoring service. We thank President Trump for offering the required readability and assurance to our service suppliers that they are going to face no penalties offering TikTok,” the corporate mentioned in a press release.
In apply, the regulation penalizes app shops, like Apple and Google, and different web firms, like Oracle, for distributing or updating any TikTok content material.
Can President-elect Donald J. Trump reverse the ban?
It’s not clear if Mr. Trump can stall the ban beneath the regulation, however he has vowed to take action. Mr. Trump said on the social media platform Truth Social on Sunday that he would difficulty an govt order on Monday that might “prolong the time period earlier than the regulation’s prohibitions take impact, in order that we are able to make a deal to guard our nationwide safety.”
He additionally mentioned that he deliberate to rearrange a deal that might give the USA a 50 p.c possession stake in a brand new entity involving TikTok, however it was unclear what form that might take. “With out U.S. approval, there isn’t a Tik Tok,” he wrote. “With our approval, it’s value a whole lot of billions of {dollars}.”
Can he legally do this?
The brand new regulation has a provision that claims a president can difficulty a one-time extension of 90 days to the ban, if she or he certifies to Congress {that a} “certified divestiture” is underway and that it may happen throughout that interval. However it’s not clear if he can train that choice now that the regulation has taken impact. The regulation was handed by Congress with huge bipartisan assist, signed by President Biden and now upheld by the Supreme Court docket. So to easily subvert it now will increase critical questions.
Sarah Kreps, the director of the Tech Coverage Institute at Cornell College, mentioned that Mr. Trump’s choices now are “uncharted authorized territory.”
What are the federal government’s issues with TikTok?
U.S. officers have lengthy been involved about ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese language authorities. They’ve identified that ByteDance may hand over delicate U.S. consumer knowledge to Beijing, like location info, noting to legal guidelines that permit the Chinese language authorities to secretly demand knowledge from Chinese language firms and residents for intelligence-gathering operations.
They’re additionally frightened that China may use TikTok’s content recommendations to gasoline misinformation, a priority that escalated in the USA after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas warfare and in the course of the presidential election.
TikTok has lengthy maintained that it has by no means misused knowledge or unfold propaganda on the behest of Beijing in the USA. It has tried to distance itself from ByteDance, which is taken into account to be one of many world’s most highly valued start-ups, by saying that TikTok’s headquarters are in Singapore and Los Angeles, and that ByteDance is basically owned by international buyers. However there are nonetheless workers in China that work on TikTok, although TikTok itself is just not utilized in China.
Didn’t Trump begin all of this within the first place?
Sure. Mr. Trump tried to orchestrate a sale of TikTok to American firms in 2020 and tried to ban the app — an effort that was in the end struck down by federal courts. He publicly changed his stance on TikTok final March quickly after he met with Jeff Yass, a billionaire and Republican megadonor who owns a big share of ByteDance, although Mr. Trump has mentioned they didn’t talk about the corporate.
He additionally loved his success on the app in the course of the 2024 election, the place he now has over 14 million followers. He has credited the app with serving to him win younger voters. In his message on Sunday, he famous that he wished TikTok customers to have the ability to take pleasure in his inauguration on the app.
