What is Happening with TikTok?

A ban of the app TikTok, a prominent Chinese social media platform, was proposed in July of 2020 by President Trump, but little happened.  Even though the ban has seemingly been circulating the government agenda for the past four and a half years, no meaningful action has materialized, until earlier this year. 

On January 18, 2025 at around 10:35 P.M. EST, when opening TikTok, American users were presented with a message reading: “Sorry, TikTok is not available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately that means you cannot use TikTok for now.” It went on to tell its users that President Trump would be working on a solution and to “stay tuned,” then prompted users to either learn more or close the app. Around that same time, Tiktok stopped appearing on Apple and Google app stores, preventing the app from being downloaded and from software updates, essentially letting TikTok die a slow death. NPR reported this stating that this is “the first time in history the U.S. government has outlawed a widely popular social network.”

However,  within 14 hours TikTok was back leaving many relieved, yet confused.

After these puzzling developments, it is important to understand the events and controversies surrounding TikTok from its creation to today.

On August 2, 2018, the company ByteDance, founded by Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yimin, merged two apps together: Musical.ly and TikTok. Joining the apps creates an algorithm powered by short-form, fast-paced content, where users create, share and watch short videos. AP News describes the content as ranging from “satirical to serious… including dance moves, kitchen food preparation and various “challenges” to perform.” Music became highly synonymous with TikTok, as artists continue seeing the invaluable reach of a viral TikTok song. 

In September 2019, The Guardian reported that content sensitive to China, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and Tibetan independence, were either deleted or limited by moderators. The next month, U.S. politicians began to call for federal investigations into the app, increasingly alarmed at its influence. The investigation began in November, and in January of 2020, the same month TikTok became the second-most downloaded app in the world, the Pentagon banned the app from all military phones.

Following complaints from privacy groups about violations of U.S. child-protection laws in May 2020, President Donald Trump announced that he is considering a ban of TikTok as retaliation for China’s alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also initiated an executive order in August, banning American companies from any “transaction” with ByteDance, including TikTok. The same month, TikTok sued the Trump administration for violation of due process in these executive orders.

In November 2020, Trump’s plans of forcing TikTok to be sold to a different company started falling apart. The deadline imposed on ByteDance is delayed, and then dropped altogether. Once Joe Biden entered office in early 2021, he postponed legal cases involving the ban, essentially halting the entire process.

After TikTok dethroned Instagram as the most downloaded app in April 2022, TikTok announced that it had migrated user data to U.S. servers managed by the U.S. company Oracle. This still didn’t  prevent newly revived concern among U.S. politicians that Chinese officials are accessing U.S. data.

In March of 2023, legislators questioned TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew at a congressional hearing, lasting six hours. He attempts to push back against assertions that TikTok and ByteDance are tools of the Chinese government.

A year later, a bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to a U.S. company gathered attention in Congress, with the House of Representatives passing the bill, followed by the Senate in the next month. In April 2024, it was signed by President Biden. In response, TikTok and ByteDance sued the federal government, claiming the bill was unconstitutional. 

Recently, however, on January 17, 2025, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law banning TikTok, unless it is sold to a U.S. company. They posited that the risk to national security caused by ties to China overrode concerns of limiting free speech. 

The next day, the fateful message was given to every American TikTok user, with its unavailability being revoked the next day. That morning, President Trump issued a statement stating that he would pause the law and extend a liability shield to companies that supported TikTok while the app’s future was being worked out. These companies, such as Oracle and Akamai, restored the website and app to millions of users in the United States.

However, at this time, TikTok still could not be downloaded or redownloaded as companies like Google and Apple still did not support TikTok on their app stores. 

But recently this has  changed. On Thursday, February 13, Apple and Google received letters from Attorney General Pam Bondi, stating that they would not be prosecuted or fined by the Trump administration for supporting the app. Now, TikTok is back in app stores, allowing it to be downloaded on mobile devices once again.

So, is TikTok back? Well, according to NPR, legal experts say that even after receiving this letter, Apple and Google are still in violation of U.S. law. Georgetown University law professor Anupam Chander says, “You now have some of the biggest corporations in the world accepting the word of the Trump Justice Department that this statute won’t be weaponized against them. This could help them stay on the good side of the Trump administration and address the financial hit they’re taking by not hosting TikTok on app stores.” If they do not stay on the good side of the administration, Apple and Google could be fined $5,000 per user, quickly adding up to billions and billions of dollars.

TikTok is back… for now. Its current position in America is precarious, built off of only a promise of the app’s extension from the current administration. What happens when a new administration takes office? What if the Trump administration changes their mind? Tiktok’s fate hangs in limbo, at the mercy of the political landscape. Its survival will not depend on its popularity, but rather on the ever-changing opinions of U.S. officials, global politics, and national security.