TikTok restoring service after Trump vows to delay ban
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President-elect Trump, Melania Trump and their son Barron board a U.S. Air Force aircraft en route to Dulles, Virginia, on Jan. 18 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
TikTok announced it is restoring service Sunday, just hours after President-elect Trump said he would sign an executive order on his first day in office to delay enforcing the U.S. ban of the social media platform.
The big picture: The app went dark Saturday night, but by Sunday afternoon services were restored for many users, complete with a notification reading, in part, "as a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!"
- Trump, who once spearheaded the effort to see TikTok banned, has spent weeks pushing for the app to be saved as the deadline, decided by a bipartisan law, neared.
- TikTok said in a statement that it was resuming services as Trump's Sunday post on the matter provided "the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans."
The latest: The decision to begin restoring services less than 24 hours after the app effectively shut down was made "in agreement with our service providers," the platform said in a statement on its TikTok Policy X account.
- "It's a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship," the statement read. "We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States."
Driving the news: Trump wrote in a Sunday Truth Social post that he will "issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law's prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security."
- He added the order will also "confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order."
- Trump said he'd like the U.S. to have a "50% ownership position" in a joint venture "between the current owners and/or new owners" to save TikTok.
- "By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to [stay] up," he wrote. "Without U.S. approval, there is no TikTok."
Reality check: The law, which President Biden signed in April, required that ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, sell the app to an approved buyer by Jan. 19 to avoid being banned.
- It's unclear if Trump wants the U.S. government or a U.S. company to have 50% ownership, and how exactly he plans to circumvent the law as an executive order can't override it.
- The White House said in a statement Friday that given the timing, the "actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration."
- But Republican Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), the chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a joint Sunday statement with Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) that there's no legal basis for any extension of the law's effective date now that it's taken effect.
Context: The divest-or-ban law does allow the president to initiate a 90-day extension, but only if there is "significant progress" toward divestiture and binding legal agreements in place to facilitate a deal.
- There is no known deal in the works for purchasing TikTok, though investor Kevin O'Leary has offered $20B.
- ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has stood firm against the ban, arguing the forced divestment is unconstitutional. And the company does not want to sell its famed, powerful algorithm.
Our thought bubble: TikTok's restoration of service means that both the company and some of its back-end U.S. service providers — Oracle, Akamai and Amazon Web Services — have decided that Trump's assurances about exempting them from liability are good enough to go on. That also means the app will presumably be running on Trump's inauguration day.
- As of this writing, neither Apple nor Google have restored the availability of the TikTok app in their app stores, meaning new users can't sign up. This suggests that neither company's lawyers are sufficiently persuaded by Trump's statement.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with a statement from TikTok and additional context.
