Starting on Saturday night, TikTok, the short-form video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, was unavailable in the United States as a result of a new law that banned the company’s apps in the country. By around noon on Sunday, it was back.
Though the law calls on ByteDance to sell TikTok to non-Chinese owners or face a ban starting Sunday, TikTok said it was responding to new “clarity” from President-elect Donald J. Trump when it restored service.
Mr. Trump vowed early Sunday to stall the implementation of the ban to give TikTok more time to make a sale that would satisfy the law. It’s still not clear how he’ll be able to do so.
What’s happening with TikTok this weekend?
TikTok feeds stopped working in the United States late on Saturday night. Instead of videos, the app showed a pop-up message to users that said a law banning TikTok was enacted in the United States and that “President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.” It added, “Please stay tuned!”
Then around noon on Sunday, the app worked again.
“In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok,” the company said in a statement.
In practice, the law penalizes app stores, like Apple and Google, and other internet companies, like Oracle, for distributing or updating any TikTok content.
Can President-elect Donald J. Trump reverse the ban?
It is not clear if Mr. Trump can stall the ban under the law, but he has vowed to do so. Mr. Trump said on the social media platform Truth Social on Sunday that he would issue an executive order on Monday that would “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.”
He also said that he planned to arrange a deal that would give the United States a 50 percent ownership stake in a new entity involving TikTok, but it was unclear what shape that would take. “Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok,” he wrote. “With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Can he legally do that?
The new law has a provision that says a president can issue a one-time extension of 90 days to the ban, if he or she certifies to Congress that a “qualified divestiture” is underway and that it can take place during that period. But it’s not clear if he can exercise that option now that the law has taken effect. The law was passed by Congress with wide bipartisan support, signed by President Biden and now upheld by the Supreme Court. So to simply subvert it now will raise serious questions.
Sarah Kreps, the director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, said that Mr. Trump’s options now are “uncharted legal territory.”
What are the government’s concerns with TikTok?
U.S. officials have long been concerned about ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government. They’ve pointed out that ByteDance could hand over sensitive U.S. user data to Beijing, like location information, noting to laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations.
They are also worried that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations to fuel misinformation, a concern that escalated in the United States after the start of the Israel-Hamas war and during the presidential election.
TikTok has long maintained that it has never misused data or spread propaganda at the behest of Beijing in the United States. It has tried to distance itself from ByteDance, which is considered to be one of the world’s most highly valued start-ups, by saying that TikTok’s headquarters are in Singapore and Los Angeles, and that ByteDance is largely owned by global investors. But there are still employees in China that work on TikTok, even though TikTok itself is not used in China.
Didn’t Trump start all of this in the first place?
Yes. Mr. Trump tried to orchestrate a sale of TikTok to American companies in 2020 and attempted to ban the app — an effort that was ultimately struck down by federal courts. He publicly changed his stance on TikTok last March soon after he met with Jeff Yass, a billionaire and Republican megadonor who owns a significant share of ByteDance, though Mr. Trump has said they did not discuss the company.
He also enjoyed his success on the app during the 2024 election, where he now has over 14 million followers. He has credited the app with helping him win young voters. In his message on Sunday, he noted that he wanted TikTok users to be able to enjoy his inauguration on the app.
