TikTok’s Controversial Existence in The United States
On Jan. 18, 2025, Tik Tok users across America could no longer access the app due to the shutting down of American servers in response to Congress' desire to ban the app. Photo by cottonbro studio via Pexels
On January 18th, TikTok shut down its services in the U.S. When users opened the app, they were faced with a pop-up message from TikTok saying, “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S…Unfortunately that means you can’t use TikTok for now.” Additionally, TikTok was, and still is, removed from Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
14 hours later, TikTok restored its services in the U.S. When users opened TikTok, they were immediately faced with a message from TikTok stating, “Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to extend the ban on TikTok, which granted a 75-day extension for the app to sell to an American operator.
But why did all this happen? Why was TikTok banned? Was it a form of censorship? Propaganda even?
Let’s dive into the app’s controversial history in the United States.
In 2016, Chinese internet technology company ByteDance launched its popular social media app TikTok globally to foreign audiences. Roughly a year later, in Nov. 2017, ByteDance purchased the most popular social media app in America at the time, Musical.ly, for $1 billion. Within nine months under new ownership, ByteDance merged Musical.ly’s platform with TikTok for all users, consolidating both into the TikTok app.
TikTok was an immediate success. The app kept most Musical.ly users entertained while also bringing in an onslaught of new users. As an app that encouraged binge-watching, video sharing and posting, the app became a global mobile device staple.
Yet, the app's 15-second video content, ranging from serious to satirical, made it so popular.
But, if the app is so popular and well-received, why were Americans restricted from using it for those 14 hours on January 18th?
In the fall of 2019, U.S. politicians and the Interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States began to question TikTok, calling for a federal investigation into the app’s acquisition of Musical.ly as well as multiple other Chinese-owned and operated apps available to Americans. The investigation stemmed from concerns about potential data collection and censorship.
However, many Americans didn’t understand the government’s quarrels with TikTok until 2020 when President Donald Trump began to express his distrust in the app. President Trump essentially stated that due to the vast amount of Americans that utilize TikTok, a Chinese-operated app, every single day, the information and data of many Americans were in their hands and thus posed a threat to American citizens.
President Trump stated, “This 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.”
With these claims came skepticism, leading many users at the time to believe the app would be banned in the U.S. However, under President Joe Biden, Trump’s legal cases regarding TikTok were postponed, effectively bringing the panic to a halt.
The question of whether TikTok would be banned or not seemingly became a nonissue for roughly four years. In fact, Former Vice President Kamala Harris and President Donald Trump, along with many other politicians, utilized the platform to campaign and even bond with supporters.
It wasn’t until early December that the talk of banning TikTok arose once again. As a shock to many Americans, on December 6th, the federal court panel unanimously upheld a law that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S.
Disappointed, many Americans took to TikTok to share their grievances over the potential death of their favorite app, or more specifically, what the deeper meaning could entail.
Many saw this as a violation of free speech as well as a form of mass censorship. After all, U.S. officials have previously—and very openly—acknowledged that they have no legitimate evidence proving that China is utilizing TikTok to spy on Americans.
Americans began to express their distrust in the entire situation, deeming it almost hypocritical for the government to suddenly show concern for American’s personal data when American-based apps have been doing so for many years.
Many American-based social media platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, admittedly collect user’s data to do the same things that TikTok collects data for: to personalize the app to fit the user’s self and interests.
When someone downloads an app where they have to make a personal account to use, they knowingly give up some of their personal data to the app. Most apps won’t let you make an account until you acknowledge your understanding of this with a checked box. Yes, most people do not read the terms and conditions, but it is ultimately implied.
Many users also felt that post-TikTok-being-unbanned, the app feels more like propaganda, especially after the message it left praising President Trump. Users should not forget that Trump himself was one of the first to incite the ban.
The entire ban itself felt like a P.R. stunt crafted to create a sense of panic across the nation only for President Trump to swoop in and extend its legality, making him seem like a hero.
Whether TikTok being banned for a mere 14 hours was propaganda to make President Trump look like a national savior or because the government truly cares about our data, the future of the app’s availability in the U.S. is still very uncertain. Enjoy doom scrolling while you can, because, soon enough, we might all have to find a new app to entertain ourselves for hours on end; one that will, of course, be using our data. At least it will be American-operated, right?