Words by Ambar Ramirez
In the weeks leading up to the TikTok ban, there were faint glimmers of hope that it might be delayed. But alas, influencers who had risen to fame on the endlessly addictive platform began bidding their followers goodbye; Red Note quickly claimed the top spot in the app store; and on Jan. 19, TikTok disappeared from the digital shelves. For a brief moment, everyone was left wondering: What’s next? Well, at least that’s what everyone was thinking for about 12 hours. One second, the app was populating the message “Sorry, TikTok Isn’t available right now” to hours later stating “Welcome back!”
I had just begun to accept the loss of the app and was honestly looking forward to maybe gaining back some of my attention span by digesting long-form media. And that’s actually what this article was going to focus on, on the return of YouTube (not that it really ever left), blog posts (still passionate about bringing back myspace but that’s a whole other article) and other media that’s longer than the 1-minute clips we are so used to on TikTok. But with the temporary ban lifted, 75-day extension to be exact, I have to do my due diligence as a journalist and dive into how this TikTok “ban” is all a part of a political scheme by President Donald J. Trump.
Before I dive into the current climate, let’s briefly take it back to when the bill to ban the app was first introduced into Congress and why it was introduced.
U.S. politicians’ unrest with the app began in Sept. 2019 when the “Washington Post” published an article that raised questions about how images of Hong Kong democracy protests and severe police involvement were present on most apps except for TikTok. However, within the same article, the “Washington Post” reported that posts on TikTok that used the #trump2020 received roughly 70 million views. In response, TikTok stated that content moderation is done in the U.S. Further, they added that the app’s sole purpose is to entertain and is not a place for politics. Within the same month, “The Guardian” revealed internal documents that detailed how TikTok instructs its moderators to delete or limit the reach of video topics that were sensitive to China, in their article “Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing.”
Sound the alarm bells. With these articles and information, U.S. politicians began to question TikTok’s influence and called for federal investigations of its Musical.ly investment and a national security probe into TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps. That investigation began in November of 2019.
In July 2020, after India banned TikTok and other Chinese apps due to a border clash with China, Trump stated he was considering banning TikTok in retaliation to China’s supposed mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then in the following month, Trump issued a vague executive order banning American companies from completing transactions with ByteDance and any affiliates, then issued a second order days later demanding that ByteDance divest itself from TikTok’s U.S. operations in 90 days. TikTok retaliated by suing the Trump administration for violating due process. Come November 2020, Biden was elected president and while Trump still planned to force a sale of TikTok, the orders and demands unraveled under Biden as he postponed the legal case.
From 2020 to 2023, talks of banning the app quieted down, but that didn’t stop politicians and news sites from sharing reports and statements that pointed out what was wrong with the app. It also didn’t stop TikTok from becoming the most downloaded app in the world beating Instagram. Cue the classic game of cat and mouse. When “The Wall Street Journal” reported that TikTok algorithms can flood teen’s pages with harmful narratives, TikTok clapped back with a new rule that would deter the spread of harmful content. Buzzfeed reported that China-based ByteDance employees have unlimited access to nonpublic information from U.S. users; TikTok announced the switch in its user data to U.S. servers managed by the U.S. tech firm Oracle.
In February of 2023, FBI Director Christopher Wray raised national security concerns over TikTok, stating that Chinese officials could manipulate the app’s algorithm to work in spreading their own propaganda. Funnily enough, TikTok isn’t even available in mainland China. They have their own TikTok that goes by the name Douyin that debuted in September 2016. The following month legislators put TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew through a six-hour congressional hearing. In short, Chew had to repeatedly confirm that he is a Singaporean citizen and has never been affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party as he is…Singaporean. This hearing should have been enough to confirm that TikTok and ByteDance are not tools for the Chinese government, but come March 2024 the House of Representatives passes the TikTok ban-or-sell bill. In April 2024, Biden signs the bill and then in May TikTok and ByteDance sue the U.S. federal government stating that the sell-or-ban law is unconstitutional.
Here’s where things get interesting. In June 2024 Trump downloaded and made an account on TikTok to post campaign-related content. Then as president-elect, Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the TikTok ban until his administration could pursue a “political resolution.”
The irony in all of this is that the idea of banning TikTok started with Trump. Sure, you could argue that it was the FBI’s raised national security concerns or the politician’s worries over harmful content, that initiated this ban. But the truth is, no one seriously talked about a ban until Trump brought it up.
Despite the clear violation of First Amendment rights—and the fact that millions of Americans rely on TikTok for income, including small businesses using it to grow their brands—the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok on Jan. 17, 2025. The ruling requires the app to be sold to an American parent company, failure of so would result with a ban set to take effect on Jan. 19, just one day before President-elect Trump’s inauguration.
And on Jan. 18, one day before the ban was to take effect, TikTok shut down.
Let’s circle back to those TikTok-populated messages that showed up on Jan. 18. It didn’t just say “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now” but further went on to say “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
And then 12 hours later when the app resumed its normal scheduling, the populated message read as follows: “Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.! You can continue to create, share and discover all the things you love on TikTok.”
Within the rush of how exciting it was to have the app back up and running, I think everyone overlooked the fact that a mass media platform that reaches 170 million Americans just publicly endorsed a politician. And not just any politician but the president of the United States. The same president that put the bill to ban the app in effect in the first place. Are we connecting the dots? No? Don’t worry, I have more.
Who owns Twitter, I mean X? That’s right: Elon Musk. The same Elon Musk that Trump appointed to be a part of his administration as government efficiency. There’s open reporting that X has artificially manipulated algorithms to push right-wing content. Who owns Meta? Mark Zuckerberg. According to an article published by “The New York Times,” after Zuckerberg visited Trump in November, he came back to headquarters to change policies within his apps stating that he was redirecting speech on its apps by loosening restrictions on how people can talk about controversial social issues. We also now know that Meta is getting rid of its fact-checking program and said it would instead rely on users to police falsehoods. The article also noted how changes to policies such as these would usually take time and heavily involve the cooperation of Meta employees, civic leaders and others to weigh in whereas with this change, Zuckerberg sprinted to make the changes in about six weeks. We also can’t just ignore that well before the ban took effect, government officials invested and put stock into Meta.
So, we have TikTok publicly endorsing Trump—something that has never happened in social media history—while every other major media platform is owned by a right-wing official. You can’t tell me that doesn’t seem at least a little odd. The real irony? U.S. politicians were so worried that China was using TikTok as a government tool and manipulating algorithms to push its own narrative, yet that’s exactly what U.S.-owned social media sites seem to be doing.
Now, amid Trump’s executive order of the 75-day extension on the TikTok ban, the app remains tangled in a legal battle. You may have noticed it’s no longer available in app stores, and phones with TikTok installed are being sold online for thousands. While Oracle seems confident in Trump’s political assurances, Apple and Google are taking a more cautious approach.
Congress has stayed adamant in its rule that TikTok must undergo a “qualified divestiture” from ByteDance to continue operating in the U.S., though there’s been some flexibility allowing ByteDance to retain a minority stake. Meanwhile, Chinese regulators are signaling they wouldn’t oppose a change in TikTok’s ownership.
It appears that the 12-hour ban was a strategic move—a warning shot to TikTok and ByteDance, proving just how easily Congress could pull the plug. And it worked.
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