The ballad of the TikTok ban continues, with newly-inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to delay the app’s ban by at least 75 days. This doesn’t mean TikTok is completely in the clear, but it does offer the app a lifeline to come to some sort of deal with the U.S. government and avoid an outright ban.
Trump doesn’t have the power to unilaterally “unban” TikTok via executive order. That was made very clear during his first term, when a 2020 executive order trying to ban TikTok was overruled on first amendment grounds. Instead this new executive order means that the Justice Department has been instructed not to enforce the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act“ for the next 75 days.
In a statement Trump said that the “unfortunate timing” of the law, which went into effect the day before he took office, “interferes with my ability to assess the national security and foreign policy implications of the Act’s prohibitions before they take effect.” Which is ironic considering his former attempt to ban TikTok, the near-universal support the law got in Congress and the majority-Republican Supreme Court upholding the ban.
What this means for TikTok isn’t clear right now. The app started restoring service on Sunday, following Trump’s pledge to “save” the app, but how this will affect service isn’t clear. While he can prevent the Justice Department from enforcing the law, at least temporarily, The Verge noted that companies can be prosecuted for enabling access to TikTok up to 5 years after the fact. With fines up to $5,000 per user, that’s a lot of money to gamble when TikTok’s long term future in the U.S. is still uncertain.
The question we have is simple: what happens next? Trump could push Congress to overturn the law, since they were the ones that passed it in the first place, or he could continue pushing for TikTok to be sold. The President has mentioned the possibility of having an American company purchase a 50% stake in TikTok. The Chinese government previously warned it would block a sale of the app, but seems to have warmed to the idea in recent days — claiming that the decision should be up to companies, not governments.
Right now TikTok doesn’t seem to be available on the Apple App Store or Google Play, and it’s unclear how that might change in the aftermath of the executive order. But for those of you that already had TikTok installed on your phone, or know how to sideload on Android, you probably won’t need to rely on a VPN to access the app for the next several weeks.
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