TikTok users in the US have witnessed their favourite social media in and out of service this Sunday, with no certainty about the future of the short video app in the country.
On Saturday night, TikTok went offline in the United States due to a federal law prohibiting the app from serving millions of American users. However, the company started reactivating the service by Sunday afternoon.
In early 2024, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill requiring the Chinese company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, to divest its U.S. assets of this short-video app within six months or face a nationwide ban. The main reasoning behind this legislation was the United States’ concerns about a potential threat to national security coming from Chinese surveillance and propaganda.
Although TikTok objected that the bill violates the rights to freedom of speech of 170 million U.S. residents who use the platform, devastates 7 million local businesses who profit from it, and stops the functioning of the social network, which annually brings $24 billion in revenue to the US economic system, the decision of the federal appeals court supported the potential ban.
Therefore, late Saturday night, TikTok users in the U.S. began receiving a restrictive message: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
At the same time, the announcement also offered customers a glimpse of hope, stating that President-elect Donald Trump will collaborate with the company on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office, which is happening on Monday.
On Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump shared his intention on Truth Social to issue an executive order to delay TikTok restrictions, giving the company about 90-day extension time to secure a deal for national security. One of the possible variants to enable TikTok operations in the United States, as suggested in the post, is “a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50% ownership.” Moreover, Donald Trump said he preferred the social network to restore its services as soon as possible to enable United States citizens to watch the Inauguration ceremony on the platform.
This way, in about 12 hours since the service went dark in the U.S., local users gradually regained their access to the platform. “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.,” the platform said in the explanatory message to users.
