OMG I’m writing to you on Sunday and TikTok was banned and is now back!! How did we get here?! What’s next?
Hi there, and welcome back to another week of Ask Trish! Can you believe that we’re already in the second-to-last week of January? The month is flying by. Amidst everything happening in our world this past month, I hope you and yours have been safe, healthy, and well. For those of you for whom January has been more difficult, know that I’m thinking of you and sending you all of the love.
Speaking of everything happening in our world…January 2025 has certainly delivered some pretty earth-shattering moments, including, this past weekend, popular social media app TikTok going dark in the United States–and then, not even 24 hours later, being reinstated. For 170 million Americans across the country (myself included!), it was a pretty incredible (incredible, meaning shocking, hard-to-believe) moment to see a little alert pop-up on their TikTok app, telling them that they could no longer access the platform. After months of speculation, the ban was finally in place. Some were happy when it was quickly lifted…while others were disappointed and contend that this won’t be the end of this battle. All that’s to say: this is an evolving situation, one that’s likely to change in the weeks and months following this post. Even so, I think this week’s question could not be a better one (thanks so much to the question-er!): how, exactly, did we get here, and what might the future look like for TikTok? In this week’s post, that’s exactly what I get into.
So, first and foremost: how did we get here? What are the origins of this ban? To put it simply: over the last five years, American policymakers have grown increasingly concerned that TikTok is a tool of the Chinese government. (This AP article, on which I base the content in this paragraph, offers a comprehensive, multi-year timeline.) It all started back in 2019, when journalists noticed that images and videos from the Hong Kong democracy protests, though common across most social media platforms, were oddly absent on TikTok. This glaring gap raised questions: was TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, requiring that TikTok moderate this content at the instruction of the Chinese government? The same month, The Guardian reported that internal documents showed that ByteDance and TikTok did censor videos that displeased the Chinese Communist Party–a moderation approach that, of course, raised eyebrows here in the West. Things did not get better from there. Soon after, the Pentagon recommended “that all U.S. military personnel delete TikTok from all phones, personal and government-issued.” By August 2020, President Trump (in his first term) issued an Executive Order demanding that ByteDance divest itself from TikTok’s US assets–but with the election of former President Joe Biden later that year, the Order ultimately unraveled. Then, near the end of 2022, we got some pretty concerning reports. The first came from BuzzFeed, which reported that leaked internal documents showed that China-based ByteDance employees had repeatedly accessed the non-public data of US TIkTok users. (As I’d saying on TikTok, that’s #problematic, to say the least.) At the same time, FBI Director Christopher Wray sounded the alarm bells on TikTok, saying that “the FBI was concerned that the Chinese had the ability to control the app’s recommendation algorithm, ‘which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.’” The following year, in March 2023 Congress grilled TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew over the app and whether it was subject to influence by the Chinese government.
With all of that…you can see how, by the time 2024 rolled around, it wasn’t really all that surprising that the US Congress had introduced–and would later pass a bill to ban TikTok in the United States. More specifically, the bill either (i) required ByteDance to sell its stake in the app to an American company or (ii) be cut off from the US market. As we saw this past weekend, ByteDance refused to do the former, despite offers from folks like America billionaire Frank McCourt, who has said that, if selected, he would ensure that TikTok give “individuals and creators on the platform the value and control they deserve regarding who has access to their data and how it is used.” And so, on Saturday and early Sunday last week, the app went dark.
But then, on Sunday, President Trump announced that he would (and indeed, he ultimately did) issue an Executive Order to reinstate the app in the United States. Why the sudden change in heart? Well, reports indicate that Trump changed his mind after meeting last year with Jeff Yass, a Republican donor and billionaire investor who owns a huge stake in ByteDance. Naturally, one would assume that Yass urged Trump not to let the app go dark–lest his investment go to waste. (Trump, however, has publicly claimed that Yass and him did not discuss TikTok at that meeting.) It may also be, though, that Trump has a different vision for TikTok’s future. Trump seems to be pushing for a “joint venture” of some kind, in which the US would have a 50% ownership stake in TikTok. It’s unclear exactly how the mechanics of that would work out…we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, however, the TikTok ban’s supporters, which include members of President Trump’s Republican Party, are unlikely to back down. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), for instance, said on Sunday that the app should only come back online after all ties with China have been cut.
That’s pretty much all we know about where things are headed from here. But I’ll be sure to bring you any and all of the new details as they are released! As we wait to see what happens, if you have any other TikTok-related–or completely unrelated–questions, please share them with me here. Y’all ask the best questions–please keep them coming! I can’t wait to hear from you–thank you so much in advance for your contributions.
Have a great week,
Trish
The opinions expressed in Ask Trish and by other contributors are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of ConnectSafely. ConnectSafely is dedicated to fostering thoughtful discussions and exploring a broad spectrum of perspectives.