On Saturday night, the U.S. government banned TikTok due to concerns over national security. However, President Donald Trump gave the social media app a 75-day extension, allowing users who kept the app downloaded to continue to access content on Sunday morning.
Trump first proposed a TikTok ban in 2020, when he signed an executive order requiring the China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. assets to an American company within 45 days; while federal courts denied this order, Congress later passed a bill in 2024 with a bipartisan majority that gave ByteDance nine months to sell. On Jan. 17, 2025, the Supreme Court decided in TikTok Inc v. Garland to follow through with the ban.
Trump signed a new executive order on Monday — his first day in office — to provide an extra 75 days for TikTok to negotiate.
“So what I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, ‘buy it, and give half to the United States of America, … and we’ll give you the permit,’” said Trump at a Tuesday press briefing.
Critics of TikTok find issues with how much data the algorithm collects from its millions of American users. Many U.S. social media companies also collect large amounts of personal information, but China could force TikTok to hand over the data to its government.
“The act’s prohibitions and divestiture requirement are designed to prevent China — a designated foreign adversary — from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of U.S. TikTok users,” said the Supreme Court. “This objective qualifies as an important government interest under intermediate scrutiny.”
Leading up to the ban, however, “TikTok refugees” flocked to similar social media sites; the Chinese apps RedNote and Lemon8 in particular saw tens of thousands of Americans join.
Many Americans and TikTok users voice their view that banning the app from the U.S. is a form of censorship.
“The First Amendment gives us the right to speak freely and to communicate freely, and TikTok as a platform has created a community and a space for free speech for 150 million Americans and counting,” said former New York Representative Jamaal Bowman in a 2023 speech.
TikTok is currently unavailable for download in U.S. app stores.
