After a 14-hour blackout last weekend, TikTok has resumed service for its 170 million users in the United States and has been granted a 75-day penalty-free extension by President Donald Trump's executive order to organise its operations.
On January 19, the video-sharing app officially shut down and was inoperable for all its users in the US, along with other applications owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, and was removed from app stores.
TikTok is currently operational in the US, though still not downloadable in app stores. It is unclear what will happen during the 75-day period. However, Trump may still push for a full or partial sale of the app to a US company.
Before the shutdown, Trump confirmed his plans to extend the deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok, allowing the app to continue operating in the US.
“My initial thought is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the US. gets a 50% ownership in a joint venture set up between the US and whichever purchase we so choose,” said Trump.
A brief background on TikTok
TikTok, known as Douyin in China, is a short-form video hosting service developed by the Chinese tech company ByteDance and was launched in September 2016.
It started its life as Musical.ly, a popular lip-syncing app with a significant user base in the US. The app was mostly made up of teenagers who were posting themselves dancing and lip-syncing to their favourite pop songs.
In November 2017, Chinese software company, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly, combined its features and user accounts with its own social media app, and renamed it TikTok.
The app gained huge popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic when people of all ages were forced indoors and, with little else to do, turned to TikTok as both a creative outlet and digital community builder.
It was also around this time that US relations with China soured, and concerns about cyber security grew, prompting Trump to spearhead the initial executive order in 2020 to potentially ban TikTok in the US.
IOL TECHNOLOGY