Like Lazarus, TikTok has risen from the dead. A ban on the social media app used by more than 170 million Americans has been averted, at least for now, the company announced in a midday tweet on Sunday. The news came after President-elect Donald Trump announced he would use an executive order to extend the deadline for an American entity to take at least a majority stake in the application.
The app was the subject of bipartisan legislation known as the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a federal move that would make it illegal for service providers to enable its use within the US unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sold the app to a government-approved buyer.
Advocates for the ban, including Congress and President Joe Biden, held that the video-sharing app threatened national security, while those in support of TikTok argued that banning it violated First Amendment rights to free speech. The ban, which Biden signed into law in April, followed a similar effort by then-president Trump, who had also attempted to ban the platform via executive action in 2020 before federal courts blocked his efforts.
As with Trump’s previous ban attempt, ByteDance challenged the current legislation, citing First Amendment concerns. In a separate brief to the Supreme Court, users of the service acknowledged the ongoing geopolitical tension between China and the US, yet argued that allowing the law to take effect amounts to a “suppression of Americans’ speech” and “flies in the face of our history, tradition and precedent.”
LONDON, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 28: In this photo illustration, a TikTok logo is displayed on an iPhone on February 28, 2023 in London, England. This week, the US government and European Union’s parliament have announced bans on installing the popular social media app on staff devices. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
The Biden administration also wrote a brief to the Supreme Court, saying that the law “addresses the serious threats to national security posed by the Chinese government’s control of TikTok, a platform that harvests sensitive data about tens of millions of Americans and would be a potent tool for covert influence operations by a foreign adversary.”
Since 2020, Trump has notably changed his stance on TikTok. In March, he reversed course and confirmed that he no longer supports the ban, as it would “make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people.”
“There are a lot of people on TikTok that love it,” Trump said then. “There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it.”
That new perspective was reflected when following his election, Trump urged the US Supreme Court to delay its deliberations on the ban challenge. They didn’t and ruled Friday that the TikTok block was constitutional. In response, the Biden administration said it would not enforce the ban and would leave that to Trump. “Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday,” it said in a statement attributed to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Ninety minutes before its shutdown deadline at midnight Saturday, the app went dark, replaced with a message that read, “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”