On January 19, video streaming app TikTok shut down in the United States. Both the Trump and Biden administrations determined TikTok threatened US national security, so Congress passed a law in April. that gave the app until January 19 to sell to an American owner or shut down. TikTok chose to shut down.
Twelve hours later, TikTok was back. The law didn’t change, and the app remained banned. The owners didn’t change despite rumors spreading that TikTok “felt different” because of fewer ads. Americans went to bed with a banned app and woke up to TikTok’s return.
So what happened?
Immediately after his inauguration as President of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order preventing the enforcement of the TikTok ban for “a period of 75 days from today.” This delays TikTok ban enforcement until April 5. Trump created this extension “to allow [his] administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward.”
But what will be that way forward? TikTok faces the same situation they did after the Supreme Court upheld the ban on January 17: divest or disappear. TikTok can still operate in the United States if ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese-based owner, sells to an American buyer.
Kevin O’Leary, known for his time as an investor on Shark Tank, expressed interest in buying the app. So has Elon Musk, though the SEC may not approve a sale to Musk since he already owns X. Jimmy Donaldson, better known as YouTuber MrBeast, expressed his interest in buying TikTok over social media. Tech giants Oracle and Microsoft have also expressed interest in buying TikTok.
What’s preventing ByteDance from selling to any of these buyers is that they don’t want to sell. TikTok made ByteDance around $16.1 billion in 2023, and projections show the app reaching over 2 billion global users this year. While the US only makes up 108 million of TikTok’s user base, it generates more revenue than any other market. If nothing changes for TikTok, estimates show ByteDance will make nearly $10 billion from US users this year.
Since the US creates around half of TikTok’s revenue, Trump suggested that the US and China co-own the app. “If I do the deal, it may be worth a trillion dollars,” he said after signing his executive order. “If I do the deal for the United States, I think we should get half. The U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok.” Trump hasn’t clarified if this offer would see the US government partner with TikTok or if he personally would partner with TikTok (though neither would be legal).
Trump cannot overturn the TikTok ban—only Congress can do that—but he could just not enforce the TikTok ban. Doing so would hurt Trump politically, however, as he started the ball rolling on the US banning TikTok. On August 6, 2020, Trump signed Executive Order 13942 to shut down TikTok for 45 days—a shutdown that never happened because the courts found the executive order unconstitutional.
Trump changed his opinion on TikTok during his 2024 presidential campaign when he started amassing thousands of TikTok followers. Trump made saving TikTok from being banned central to his appeal to Gen Z voters: more than 4 in 5 use TikTok, and this increased its voteshare for Trump by 13 points. However, there remains a core of conservative critics that believe TikTok’s data collection and content policies threaten national security.
To keep both groups happy, Trump has pushed his “50-50” ownership plan and has embraced TikTok. Trump invited the CEO of TikTok to his inauguration, and after going dark for 12 hours on January 19, a TikTok alert thanked Trump personally for restoring service (despite TikTok not needing to shut down at all—President Biden told TikTok that he wouldn’t enforce the ban, and the White House called the 12-hour shutdown “a stunt”).
Whether helped along by Trump or not, if ByteDance doesn’t sell its American business before April 5, the ban goes into effect, which means… well, it’s not clear. As we’ve previously reported, the ban would start by eliminating the app for download in the US. However, that’s already happened. Both Apple’s App Store and Google Play currently block American users from downloading TikTok.
While an iOS or Android update could delete TikTok off a user’s phone, this isn’t likely. Instead, users with the app already installed could continue to use it until they get a new phone or the TikTok app gets too buggy from a lack of updates to function. The US government might also order ISPs to block accessing TikTok in America (though, as the recent adult content ban in Florida proved, this would likely just result in Americans accessing TikTok through a VPN).
TikTok would ultimately see its US user base disappear as a competiting video sharing app would get their US business. Meta could see its profits increase by 5% from US users flocking to Instagram Reels if TikTok shuts down. However, TikTok users upset by the ban have already started to migrate to other foreign-owned video blogging sites like RedNote that replicate TikTok’s features better than Reels. However, the law banning TikTok will ban RedNote too—both risk national security in the same ways.
Ultimately, ban or no ban, TikTok will die, killed by a video app that doesn’t exist yet. This is how TikTok got big in the first place, as it supplanted Vine, Periscope, and Musical.ly. Several companies are developing TikTok rivals set to come out later this year. BlueSky, whose recent X-like app made industry waves for its decentralized network, started beta testing last week for Flashes, an alternative to Instagram and TikTok that promises an ad-free experience and no data collection.
