TikTok is Alive…For Now

Having failed to divest from its Chinese owners, TikTok was supposed to die yesterday. And it did briefly.

TikTok went offline in the United States Saturday night, less than two hours before a ban was slated to go into effect. The extraordinary blackout prevents access to one of the world’s most popular social media apps – one that had been used by 170 million Americans.

Visitors to the app were met with a message reading: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”

But by Sunday afternoon it was back after President-elect Trump indicated he would try to extend the time for a sale.

TikTok restored access for American users midday on Sunday after a whirlwind 14 hours during which the app temporarily shut itself down. TikTok credited Trump for bringing the app back, after he pledged to sign an executive order to delay enforcement of the law that had required the app to spin off from its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned as of Sunday.

“I 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,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Sunday. He added that he would not hold TikTok’s technology partners — including Apple, Google and cloud computing company Oracle — liable for continuing to make the app available until he signed the order.

TikTok certainly seems to have played this right. Their survival in American depends on Trump at the moment so they are praising him for that. 

“As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!,” a pop-up message on Sunday read.

TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Chew, filmed his own thank-you video to Mr. Trump last week, even referring to the president’s personal TikTok account. Mr. Chew has also visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and has been invited to sit in a position of honor on the dais at Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

TikTok “will go to any lengths to please the authorities” while facing this ban, said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University and an expert on the global regulation of new technologies.

Of course serving the government is exactly why the ban was passed in the first place. The concern on both sides of the aisle is that TikTok could be used to benefit the CCP in some way when it needed a boost. Some observers suggested something similar was already happening only with Trump benefiting instead of China.

…after the app was restored, many users expressed frustration at being part of what some called “political theatre” that appeared to be clearly aimed at boosting Trump’s image, although he was the first to try to ban TikTok during his previous administration. Some users questioned whether TikTok shut itself down not to protect its technology partners but so that Trump would look like the app’s savior, as it seeks to secure its future in the United States.

“Did we just get a 16-hour pop up ad for Donald Trump?” one user asked in a post.

Another user said in a video: “Why is everyone thanking Trump for wanting to ‘save’ TikTok when he was the one that put it on the map to be banned in the first place?”

So the company gets a chance to survive (in America) and Trump gets lots of praise on the most popular social media app in the country. But can he really do this? Ultimately it’s not clear how long he can delay the law which was signed last April.

Several prominent Republican lawmakers have indicated they will resist an extension of the law.

“Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date,” Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said in a joint statement. “For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China. Only then will Americans be protected from the grave threat posed to their privacy and security by a communist-controlled TikTok.”

So it’s really not clear an executive order matters here. Ultimatley, I”m not sure what the point is given that China has refused to allow ByteDance to sell the US subsidiary. If China won’t budget, Trump should let the law take effect. There’s no upside to giving the Chinese a backdoor into American data not to mention a chance to subtly influence domestic politics.