TikTok is back online in the United States, following a nationwide ban that lasted less than one day. Now, the new US administration has given TikTok more time for “addressing national security concerns” to avoid another ban.
TikTok has had a rough time with the US federal government for the past few years. President Trump signed an executive order in 2020 ordering ByteDance, the China-based owner of TikTok, to sell the social media app to another company due to supposed national security concerns. The order was challenged in courts, and President Biden revoked the order in 2021, citing the need for an “evidence-based approach” operated by the US Department of Commerce that would analyze apps for problems.
The Biden administration later passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), with bipartisan support in Congress. It ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok within 270 days to a group the US doesn’t consider a “foreign adversary.” TikTok shut down access in the US on January 18th, then started back up when then-incoming President Trump promised that he would postpone the ban.
A new executive order now blocks “any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today, moving the deadline to early April. It says the new Trump administration “must also review sensitive intelligence related to those concerns and evaluate the sufficiency of mitigation measures TikTok has taken to date.”
It’s still not clear what will happen to TikTok. The original executive order from 2020 and the PAFACA law from 2024 were both intended to force TikTok, or at least its US operations, to be divested to an American company. Microsoft and Oracle were both in talks to acquire TikTok’s US business in 2020, and ByteDance has publicly denied all interest in selling any part of TikTok.
Source: The White House
