Tiktok’s parent company, ByteDance, has until April 5 to sell the popular social media app to an American buyer, or it will face a ban in the country. Previously, TikTok went dark in the late hours of Jan. 18, 2025, as it failed to comply with Congress’s April 2024 law that asked ByteDance to divest its U.S. operations or shut down the app. On his first day in office, however, President Donald Trump issued an executive order delaying the enforcement of the ban for 75 days.
“Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to ensure our platform thrives as your online home for limitless creativity and discovery, as well as a source of inspiration and joy for years to come,” TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew said after the extension.
TikTok, known as Douyin in mainland China and Hong Kong, merged with lip-sync app Musical.ly and entered the international market in 2017. As of May 2024, it had more than 1.04 billion users worldwide and is available in more than 150 countries. The app attracted 170 million users in the U.S. and generated $16 billion by the end of 2023.
According to a 2019 report from the American think tank Peterson Institute of International Economics, TikTok is a national security threat. The report alleged that the app could share its users’ location, image and biometric data with its parent company. Furthermore, per the Chinese Internet Security Law, ByteDance will have to share this data with the Chinese government if asked to do so.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) opened an investigation into TikTok and ByteDance. In response, the U.S. Navy and Army banned their personnel from using the apps on all government-issued phones.
In 2020, Trump, in his first term, passed an order banning TikTok unless ByteDance divested app ownership. Companies like Microsoft and Oracle were rumored to be interested in buying TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but those deals never materialized. Nevertheless, the app was not banned because it received a preliminary injunction in September 2020.
Joe Biden was elected in 2021 and revoked Trump’s order. However, his administration also found TikTok’s activities suspicious and asked the Secretary of Commerce to investigate whether the app threatened U.S. national security. Multiple officials and experts, including Senator Marco Rubio, Representative Mike Gallagher and FBI Director Christopher Wray, also called for TikTok’s ban in the country. These investigations led to legislation passed in 2024, setting the conditions for the app.
If permanently banned, the U.S. will not be the first country where TikTok is unavailable. The app is completely banned in countries like India and Albania. Previously, the Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia governments issued bans that were eventually lifted.
TikTok has consistently maintained that no data gets shared with China. It claims that American user data is saved on U.S.-based servers with a backup in Singapore and cannot be accessed by the Chinese government. Critics of the ban also raise the concern that there is insufficient public evidence to show that American user data has been accessed by or shared with the Chinese government.
Michael Specter, assistant professor in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, believes that much work must be done. “Data privacy is a real problem, and … it is not out of the question that TikTok’s data could wind up in the hands of [China]. That said, perhaps the focus should be on creating better data privacy and algorithmic fairness laws in general, rather than fixating on one company,” he said in an email to the Technique.
The absence of TikTok could also affect the lives of millions of Americans. Per its 2024 report, TikTok added $24 billion to the economy and supported 224,000 jobs.
“In just a few short years, the platform has gone from a novelty to a necessity for entrepreneurs looking to survive and thrive in even the most challenging economic environments,” the report said.
Specter envisions a future without closed platforms like TikTok, whose centralized ecosystems can be arbitrarily purchased or manipulated. In his opinion, decentralized social media apps like Mastodon and BlueSky are the future of social media. These apps give users more control over their data and content, allowing them to make decisions about the platform through democratic processes.
“Think about a social media landscape that behaves a bit more like email, allowing the user to define their content preferences,” he said. “That’s exciting!”