The reason behind TikTok’s ban in the United States
On the night of January 18th, TikTok went dark less than two hours before a ban was scheduled to go into effect in the United States.
The ban has now been lifted following President Trump’s reassurance that U.S. companies would not face penalties for keeping TikTok’s services running. He has now suspended the ban for 75 days to give TikTok time to find a U.S. buyer.
In March 2024, a bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to a U.S. company gained traction in Congress amid protest from users and was promptly passed by the House of Representatives. The TikTok legislation was part of a larger 95-billion-dollar package that provided foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel that was passed 79-18 by the Senate a month later.
This was a strategy made by House Republicans to expedite the ultimatum by attaching it to a high-priority package. That version had given the Chinese tech giant ByteDance six months to sell its shares of the app. However, concerns that six months would be too short for a deal involving billions of dollars caused this legislation to be updated. The deadline for the deal was extended by three months, giving ByteDance until January 19th, 2025 to sell the platform or have it banned in the U.S.
The bill banning TikTok was passed due to concerns over the app’s data security, following a Buzzfeed report in June 2022 that ByteDance employees had access to private information of TikTok users based on leaked audio recordings from internal TikTok meetings.
During a meeting, a TikTok director referred to an engineer based in mainland China as a “Master Admin” who “has access to everything”, seemingly referring to users’ private data. These security concerns were denied by TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew during a congressional hearing on January 31st, 2024.
Over the next 9 months, little progress was made following a statement from ByteDance that they would not be selling TikTok. This eventually led to the servers going dark on the evening of January 18th.
The ban was quickly undone by Trump’s executive order to delay the ban, who explained during a rally that, “I like TikTok”, due to its role in helping the Republican Party “[win] the youth vote by 36 points.”
Nevertheless, the future for TikTok remains uncertain. ByteDance has yet to secure a deal with a U.S. buyer and there are many concerns as to whether the social media app will find a buyer before Trump’s 75-day extension ends.
Sources: PBS, CNN, Associated Press, BBC, Buzzfeed News
