Social media platform TikTok has resumed operations in the United States after a 14-hour shutdown, with the company attributing its return to efforts by President-elect Donald Trump and an agreement that includes a promised reprieve. The unexpected outage followed mounting pressure on ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, from the US government over concerns related to national security and data privacy.
The platform’s brief disappearance came in response to its failure to meet a federal deadline of January 19, which required ByteDance to divest its US operations. This deadline, set under a law passed last year, aimed to address fears over the potential misuse of data collected from American users. While TikTok is now operational again, it remains absent from app stores across the United States.
Upon logging back into TikTok, users were greeted with a message acknowledging the platform’s return and crediting Trump for his role. The notification read:
“Welcome back! As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the US.”
Speaking at a victory rally in Washington, DC, on Sunday, Trump reassured supporters that TikTok’s service had been restored.
“As of today, TikTok is back,”
he declared to an enthusiastic crowd.
“Frankly, we have no choice; we have to save it.”
Trump also shared plans to grant TikTok an additional 90 days after he assumes office to finalize a deal that would see the platform sold to a US-based buyer. During his speech, he proposed a unique ownership structure:
“I’ll approve, but let the United States of America own 50% of TikTok,”
he stated.
“And the United States will do what we call a ‘joint venture.’”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew extended his gratitude to Trump for ensuring that the platform remains available to its approximately 170 million American users. According to CNN, citing unnamed sources, Chew plans to attend both Trump’s victory rally and his inauguration on Monday, further solidifying the ongoing dialogue between TikTok and US leadership.
The 14-hour downtime did not go unnoticed by users, many of whom turned to RedNote, another Chinese-owned social media application. RedNote surged to the top of the US Apple App Store’s download charts during the outage, bolstered by the viral hashtag #TikTokRefugee. The hashtag highlighted the swift migration of users exploring alternative platforms amidst uncertainty over TikTok’s future.
