One of the first things that President Donald Trump did after getting sworn in, was to prevent TikTok from getting banned, as promised. Trump signed an executive order that delays the enforcement of the ban, which would have otherwise banned TikTok for 75 days, and provided more time for the company to work out a solution.
The ban was supposed to go into effect starting January 19th, which was a day just before Trump took office. The law required TikTok to separate itself from ByteDance as U.S. officials worry TikTok could share data about American users with the Chinese government, which is a threat to the U.S.' national security.
The law did actually kick in on January 19th, and for about 14 hours on January 20, TikTok was indeed offline in the U.S. leaving millions of users unable to access the app, though it modified its popup message on the app, indicating there's still hope when Trump takes office later in the day. After Trump's order was signed later on Monday, TikTok quickly came back online.
The order also told the Justice Department to let companies like Apple, Google, and Oracle know that there weren’t any violations of the law during that time, which basically cleared them of any blame for anything they did related to TikTok during the whole situation.
To keep things interesting, Trump hinted at the possibility of creating a joint venture involving some U.S.-based companies to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. Trump said he "could see" the U.S. government taking a 50% stake in TikTok as well.
The idea is certainly not new as Trump had pushed something similar back in 2020 too, during his presidency, when he first tried to ban TikTok over security fears. At that time, there were talks of companies like Oracle and Walmart taking over TikTok's U.S. operations, but such plans never materialized.
For now, TikTok's millions of American fans can breathe a sigh of relief as they can continue scrolling through their favorite videos. But the future is still uncertain as we still don't know whether ByteDance will sell TikTok, whether there will be a new deal involving American companies, or whether the ban will eventually go into effect.
Via Reuters
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