By Inge van der Westhuizen
Most people who have used TikTok since 2020 know that the U.S. government has been considering banning the app for years. In 2020, President Donald Trump suggested banning TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, in response to China’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns over national security.
TikTok didn’t get banned in 2020 or during other similar threats, but on January 18, 2025, the app briefly went offline for 24 hours for many of its 150 million American users. So, what was behind the sudden action?
In 2017, ByteDance bought Musical.ly and merged it with TikTok. Since then, U.S. politicians, the Pentagon, and media outlets have raised concerns about the app’s potential threat to national security. These concerns became more serious after a BuzzFeed article in 2022 revealed that TikTok employees had accessed sensitive data of U.S. users. The article reported that between September 2021 and January 2022, engineers in China had accessed U.S. user data, even though U.S. employees didn’t have the same access.
In response, TikTok moved its data to U.S.-based servers managed by Oracle, a U.S. tech company. But by then, worries about China’s access to U.S. data had already spread. This led to President Joe Biden signing a law in April 2024, requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok to a U.S. company or face a shutdown within a year. ByteDance then sued, claiming the law violated the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court sided with Biden. The ban was scheduled for January 19, 2025.
Despite this, TikTok had no reason to shut down voluntarily on January 18. Biden had already announced that his administration wouldn’t enforce the ban, and Trump had shown support for keeping TikTok available in the U.S. Yet, TikTok went dark a day earlier than needed, with a message saying, “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the USA. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.” When TikTok started being removed from app stores on January 18, President Trump extended the ban by 90 days. TikTok came back online about 12 hours later, even before Trump took office on January 20.
It seems unlikely that TikTok will be permanently banned in the U.S., but what’s the real point of all this drama? Think about it: has TikTok ever been as popular as it is now? Has Trump ever had such widespread support? Both as a defender of older America and as a champion for younger generations? Doesn’t it seem too convenient that everyone seems to be benefiting from this “national security” issue? Only time will tell what happens next.
