TikTok is one of the most famous social media apps in the current day, popularizing short-form content since 2016. However, it has been a hot topic as of late and was banned (and swiftly unbanned) on Jan. 20, 2025. Many have been left confused about what the current state of TikTok is, and what is going to happen in the future.
First, looking back to 2020 when President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban TikTok in the United States on the grounds of national security, as TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese owned. Trump wrote that TikTok steals U.S. data and can use it against the government.
“This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage,” the executive order reads.
A bill then passed in the Senate made it so TikTok could no longer be on federal government devices.
President Joe Biden then signed into law on April 24, 2024, that TikTok must be sold to an American parent company, otherwise, it, and other ByteDance apps, will be banned in the U.S. Despite the public outcry, this law was passed as a bipartisan effort of both Democrats and Republicans who agree that TikTok’s ownership is an issue of public safety.
Now, to the current day, where both President Biden and Trump have switched their outlook on TikTok. President Trump has reversed course on his initial push for the ban and pledged on his first day in office, the U.S. government will offer TikTok a 90 day extension to sell to an American company. Biden decided to not enforce the ban until Trump is back in office.
As of now, TikTok is once again in the U.S., however, the specific calling-out of President Trump has people worried that TikTok could potentially go the way of Twitter (now X) in pushing much more right-wing content to the average user. The future of the app is murky, and, hopefully, in the coming days, more will be known on the Trump Administrations’ plans for TikTok.
