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TikTok is back online after Trump pledged to restore it

The president-elect unveiled plans for a Day One executive order to save TikTok from a ban, which is immediately raising a host of legal questions.

“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!” said President-elect Donald Trump. | Matt Rourke/AP

“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!” said President-elect Donald Trump. | Matt Rourke/AP

 
New York (CNN) — Around 12 hours after shutting itself down in the United States, TikTok is back for many users almost like it never left, attributing its return to a move by President-elect Donald Trump to save the app.

TikTok welcomed users back with a notification that said: “Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”

The whiplash move to bring the app back comes after TikTok became unusable for Americans late Saturday night. Users who tried to open the app at that time were met with a message saying it was offline and asking users to “stay tuned.”

 

“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now,” TikTok’s message read in part. The app was also unavailable on the Apple and Google Play stores, along with Lemon8 and CapCut, which are also owned by TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance.

Early on Sunday, Trump said he would issue an executive order following his inauguration on Monday to delay enforcement of the divest-or-ban law. And within hours, access to TikTok’s app and webpage began to return for US users.

TikTok’s restoration will be welcome news for the app’s 170 million American users, many of whom use the app for hours every day to find news, entertainment and community and, in some cases, to make a living, after weeks of uncertainty.

And it signaled that Trump may be poised to score a major political victory by claiming responsibility for bringing back the popular platform. In a statement midday Sunday, TikTok said Trump’s promise to save the app allowed it to restore US users’ access even before his expected executive order is signed.

“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 to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive,” the company said in a statement. “We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”

TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s “Make America Great Again Victory Rally” in Washington, DC, Sunday night, before being seated prominently at the incoming president’s inauguration Monday.

But while TikTok’s shutdown lasted just a few hours, securing the app’s long-term future in the United States is likely to be more complicated.

The path to securing TikTok’s future

Trump said Sunday in a Truth Social post that he plans to issue an executive order following his inauguration on Monday to “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 urged TikTok’s partners to allow the app to be restored, saying “the order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”

“Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations,” Trump said.

Trump had said he was considering a 90-day extension in the ban to give him time to work out a deal to sell the app to a non-Chinese owner. In his post, Trump said he would seek a 50-50 joint venture between TikTok’s existing parent company, China-based ByteDance, and a new, American owner.

Such an announcement could serve as a kind of immediate political victory for Trump with America’s youth. Although Trump supported a TikTok ban in his first term as president, he has recently said he wants to keep the app alive — posting on Truth Social Sunday morning: “SAVE TIKTOK!” Last month, he asked the Supreme Court to stay the law so his incoming administration could work out a deal to keep TikTok available to Americans. The Supreme Court upheld the law on Friday.

TikTok appealed to Trump in its pop-up message on the app starting late Saturday night notifying users that the app was unavailable in the United States.

“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” the company posted in its pop-up message. “Please stay tuned!”

And Chew also lauded Trump in a video responding to the company’s Supreme Court loss on Friday, saying, “we are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform, one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process.”

Trump attributed his election victory in part to TikTok at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in December.

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said, then claiming to have won the youth vote by a significant margin. “And there are those that say that TikTok had something to do with it.”

The law banning TikTok passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress, citing national security concerns. Although a Pew Research Center Survey in 2023 found about half of Americans supported the ban, it has consistently proven unpopular with younger generations.

With his executive order, Trump is expected to delay enforcement of the ban to give TikTok parent company ByteDance more time to find an American owner. Trump’s Sunday message may have been enough to reassure TikTok’s technology partners, including Oracle, which hosts TikTok’s content in the United States, and Apple and Google, which host the app on their app stores, to continue supporting the app. Under the law, those companies could face penalties of up to $5,000 per person who has access to TikTok, if it is enforced.

Not a permanent solution

But the executive order could face challenges, including from members of Trump’s own party, who say they oppose any extension of the ban.

“We commend Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft for following the law and halting operations with ByteDance and TikTok, and we encourage other companies to do the same,” Republican Senators Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, and Pete Ricketts, of Nebraska, wrote in a joint statement Sunday. “The law, after all, risks ruinous bankruptcy for any company who violates it. Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date.”

Cotton and Ricketts said TikTok should only come back online by “severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China. Only then will Americans be protected from the grave threat posed to their privacy and security by a communist-controlled TikTok.”

The app’s brief blackout marked the realization of a yearslong effort to block US access to TikTok over national security concerns related to its China-based owner ByteDance. Outgoing President Joe Biden signed a law last April that gave ByteDance 270 days to sell TikTok to an owner from the United States or one of its allies or face a ban.

So even if Trump pledges to reverse the ban, he can’t simply undo a law passed by Congress and signed by a president with an executive order.

That’s why TikTok shut down in the first place. Despite the Biden administration all but saying they would defer enforcement to the incoming Trump administration, a person close to TikTok says “multiple critical service providers” indicated to TikTok that they were concerned that the ban might be enforced starting Sunday.

For example, Apple released a statement Sunday that cited the ban as its reason for removing TikTok from its app store. It noted the app will remain available for customers who already downloaded it, but it won’t be able to be redownloaded if deleted.

“Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,” the company said in its statement. “Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.”

The long-term fix

The only truly permanent solutions to keep TikTok online appear to be: 1) pass a new law reversing the old one — no easy task, considering that the existing bill had such broad bipartisan support in Congress — or 2) force a sale to an acceptable buyer.

Two potential buyers — a group led by billionaire Frank McCourt and “Shark Tank’s” Kevin O’Leary, as well as AI search engine PerplexityAI — have submitted formal bids for the app and others have reportedly shown interest in TikTok.

ByteDance, however, has long been adamant that it has no intention of selling. TikTok’s near-magical algorithm, keeping users hooked on the app, is its secret power, and putting a price tag on such a valuable commodity, envied by every other social media app, is difficult.

McCourt’s buyer group has said it would buy TikTok’s US assets without the algorithm and rebuild the app, but tech giants like Meta and YouTube have for years worked to replicate TikTok’s popular algorithm without quite succeeding. O’Leary told CNN he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month to discuss the outlook for the app.

Spinning off an American-only version of TikTok could also mean the rest of the world has to download a new app to access US users’ content. Yet Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported last week that China is weighing a sale — to Elon Musk.

Musk may have the resources to buy the app, and he’s a major Trump supporter and about to take a quasi-role in his government. But it’s unclear that he would want to, and he has not publicly commented directly on the acquisition reports.

On Sunday, Musk posted on X that he opposes the TikTok ban “because it goes against freedom of speech.”

“That said, the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced. Something needs to change,” Musk said.

If ByteDance chooses to engage, Trump could perhaps argue that significant progress has been made on a deal — a legal threshold that would legally permit Trump to reverse the ban to allow the sale process to commence.

In his Truth Social post Sunday, Trump said the United States should have “a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.”

“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say (sic) up,” he said. “Therefore, my initial thought is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50% ownership in a joint venture set up between the U.S. and whichever purchase we so choose.”

That’s only a temporary measure, though, as the sale would ultimately need to go through. Until then, TikTok’s future will remain very much in doubt.

A ‘surreal’ shutdown

Many TikTok users had held onto hope that the shutdown would be short-lived.

Still, the Saturday night shutdown was a sad loss for some users — a reminder of the app’s cultural influence. Many users joined the app in early 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic was otherwise isolating them from community and other creative outlets.

“I’m so sad for so many people. I was shocked. I think I was probably in denial a little bit that it would actually just go dark,” influencer Shannon Lange told CNN early Sunday, before access to the app was restored.

Influencer Alix Earle, who had nearly 8 million TikTok followers, posted a tearful video on the platform ahead of the shutdown saying, “I feel like I’m going through heartbreak. This platform is more than an app or a job to me. I have so many memories on here. I have posted every day for the past 6 years of my life.”

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Julie Turkel, a TikTok creator who said she was scrolling the app when it stopped working Saturday night, called the shutdown “surreal.”

“It was just surreal, it did have a very eerie feeling,” Turkel told CNN. She added that although she had anticipated the shutdown after TikTok’s warnings last week, “seeing it actually go down is different.”

Turkel told CNN early Sunday she was taking a digital “detox,” opting not to spend time on Instagram or other short-form video platforms, while TikTok was down. The break didn’t last long.

When the app returned on Sunday, Lange posted a video smiling and dancing, with overlaid text that read: “Longest 13 hours of my life and I was sleeping for 9 of them.”

– CNN’s Brian Stelter contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional content.

Author: Clare Duffy and David Goldman,

Source: CNN:::

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