Current TikTok Ban Status
The TikTok ban has been a rollercoaster, to say the least. Is the app banned? Has the application been saved? What the hell is going on? These are the questions everyone asks, and there are answers – at least to some of them. Let’s recap the last few days so everyone is up to date on what’s going on with TikTok.
How did we get here?
To summarize very briefly , the government has been seeking to ban TikTok since the first Trump administration. Last year, Congress and the Biden administration passed legislation that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States unless ByteDance sells its stake in the app by Jan. 19. ByteDance insisted that it would not be sold, and as the deadline approached, things began to improve. heated. TikTok went to the Supreme Court to argue that the ban violated the company’s First Amendment rights, but SCOTUS ruled in the government’s favor.
After this final defeat, TikTok vowed that everything would go dark unless the Biden administration intervened and blocked the ban. The administration, however, shifted the problem to the incoming Trump administration, saying the Biden administration would not enforce the law and that TikTok had no reason to act before. Meanwhile , we’ve learned that Trump is reportedly considering signing an executive order to extend the ban, which appears to be in line with the Biden administration’s position.
Saturday, January 18
This brings us to Saturday, the day before the ban goes into effect. All eyes were on the situation as no one really knew what would happen when January 19th arrived in the US. The law is very clear that after the deadline, no company will be able to distribute, support or update TikTok or its services. therefore, it was reasonable to assume that TikTok would disappear from app stores in the country.
However, the language of the law was less clear about whether TikTok would be able to continue operating in the US at all. Companies cannot provide internet hosting services to distribute, maintain or update TikTok, but does that also include hosting? The Biden administration didn’t seem to think so, so they backed down on TikTok’s threats to go offline. According to the administration, TikTok should continue to operate as usual (albeit without the ability to serve new users) and wait for the Trump administration to sort out the situation.
Well, TikTok didn’t do that. Instead, the app went completely offline on Saturday evening , at least an hour and a half before the official deadline. Users attempting to access the app were receiving a message stating that the app was banned in their country and they could not use it at this time. However, shortly after, the pop-up was updated to include a message to the new President Trump: “The US has passed a law banning TikTok. Unfortunately, this means you can’t use TikTok yet. We are fortunate that President Trump has made it clear that he will work with us on a solution to rebuild TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!” Pretty subtle, Tik Tok.
With the app now disabled in the US, users have turned to alternative methods to try and access TikTok. I wrote about how a VPN should theoretically bypass the ban , since it would then make your internet traffic look like it was coming from a country that allowed the app. However, TikTok foresaw this user behavior and decided to completely block traffic from American accounts. The only way to access TikTok over a VPN was through Safari, and it was very important which countries it would work in. (For example, routing my traffic through Japan returned an error, but when I used Romania everything worked fine.)
Sunday, January 19
TikTok remained dark throughout Sunday morning and into the afternoon. It was unclear what the timeline would look like: Trump will be sworn in the next day, so will TikTok wait for a theoretical decree before resuming operations?
The answer was no: the day before Trump took office , he started talking about how “we have to save [TikTok].” Apparently this was enough for TikTok, which began coming back online for US users at around 1:00 pm ET. The entire story lasted less than 15 hours, but it showed how TikTok feels about both the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration.
Monday, January 20
Of course, Trump took the oath of office on Monday, returning to the White House and reassuming the powers of the presidency. ( TikTok CEO Shu Chu was in attendance .) As part of a series of executive orders that followed the inauguration, Trump issued an order to delay the TikTok ban for 75 days . The order directs the Justice Department not to enforce the law during this period of time to find a buyer for TikTok. ByteDance and China have been adamant that TikTok will not be sold, but since Trump’s inauguration, the latter has expressed potential interest in a sale.
Tuesday, January 21
The situation is largely the same as Tuesday, except for one key development: Trump appears to be threatening China with tariffs if they get in the way of a deal to buy TikTok. Specifically, Trump said, “Because we put tariffs on China… I’m not saying we would do it, but we certainly could do it.”
Where should we go next?
This unprecedented situation was certainly unstable. Trump himself wanted to ban TikTok during his first term. Now he and TikTok want to spin the situation to make Trump the “savior.”
But TikTok is far from hopeless here. Apple and Google have not restored TikTok ( or any of its other properties , such as CapCut), and it is unclear that they will do so while the company’s legal situation is constantly changing. Speaking of which, the TikTok “ban” is still the law: It’s really unclear what power Trump has as president to extend deadlines here when the law went into effect the day before he took office. The law gives the president the ability to extend the deadline by 90 days if ByteDance was actively looking to sell the company but the deadline has passed, so what does that mean for Trump?
Trump said he wants the American company to own 50% of TikTok. This is not as strict as the original law, which required a US company to have complete control over the app. Perhaps such a deal would be more pleasing to ByteDance or the Chinese government, which would still return half of the assets.
Now we know what a TikTok ban in the US looks like: TikTok is going offline, users can’t access their accounts if they were created in that country, and VPNs seem to mostly work online. The question now is whether we’ll see a real ban later this year or whether we’ll instead see ByteDance sell off part or all of the app.
I will keep this article updated with the latest news regarding the TikTok ban. For now, you can continue to use it as usual – provided you downloaded the app before Saturday evening.