On Friday, January 17, the United States Supreme Court voted to uphold a law banning TikTok across the country unless it was divested from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, by this Sunday, January 19.
While the news came as a devastating blow to the short-form video-sharing app’s hundreds of millions of American users, TikTok had been flagged as a possible threat to national security for years—going back at least to the dismal summer of 2020.
That September, the Commerce Department announced its plans to restrict access to TikTok and WeChat, a messaging app, in response to an August 2020 executive order from then President Donald Trump. The order, which underlined TikTok’s potential to share user data with ByteDance, as stated in the app’s terms of service, noted that such “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.”
Yet those initial actions eventually hit a dead end. After Trump ordered that ByteDance sell off any of its TikTok-related business assets, or else face a nation-wide ban, President Biden, on taking office in January 2021, postponed that ban—that is, until a new TikTok-related bill began gathering support in Congress in March 2024.
Ten months later, on January 19, 2025, TikTok did indeed go dark: “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now,” a pop-up message on the app read that morning. “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
Within a few hours, however, service was restored. “Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!” a new message read.
So…what was all of that about? Read on for an explainer.
What sparked the first TikTok ban under President Trump?
Trump’s fraught history with TikTok goes back to July 2020, when he announced plans to ban TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps due to alleged national security concerns. On August 6, 2020, Trump signed an order stating that any transactions between TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, and US citizens would be outlawed. The ban was due to go into effect at midnight on Sunday, September 20, 2020, though the deadline was later extended—and, by February 2021, with a new president in office, it ultimately fell apart.
What happend after President Biden took office?
For a while, any legal action between the US government and TikTok was put on hold. But by February 2023, the White House had ordered the app’s removal from any government-issued mobile devices; and the following month, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew sat down for a six-hour congressional hearing, during which he was grilled on TikTok and ByteDance’s relationship to the Chinese government.
