What have we learned since the 12-hour fall and rise of TikTok?

It's been over a month since TikTok was banned in the U.S. for... 12 hours? Is that right? Anyway, what have we learned, and what's next?

We all know that TikTok has been contentious for years. From concerns over its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to niggles about how it collects sensitive data from users (and what it does with that data), it's been in the news over and over. But it's also incredibly popular, with over 1.04 billion active monthly users, making it one of the fastest-growing social media platforms ever.

Here's another way to put TikTok into perspective: The world's population sits at about 8.2 billion people. Over half of us - 5.4 billion people - use the internet. Of that number, 3.96 billion people use social media, and of those, 26.26% use TikTok. That's almost 13% of the world's population. Considering that China's population is over 1.4 billion people and TikTok isn't even available in mainland China, those stats are pretty damn impressive.

A little blast from the past

Let's zoom out for a moment. Again, TikTok isn't available in mainland China - although they do have their own version, called Douyin - but people have stressed over its potential connections to the Chinese Communist Party since TikTok's launch in 2017. The main issue has been worry that TikTok's data harvesting would give the Chinese Community Party access to its users' sensitive info (particularly troubling to the U.S. government), and also serve as a platform for pro-communist, anti-democracy messaging to influence its users (again, bothersome to Americans in particular).

But honestly, who didn't cringe last year rewatching clips of Republican Senator Tom Cotton grilling TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew about whether he himself is a Chinese Communist? This was at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child safety online, where CEOs of a number of social media apps (including Meta, Discord, Snap, and X) fronted up. "Senator, I'm Singaporean," Chew (who lives in Singapore with this American wife and children) responded with aplomb, over and over, while Cotton seemed unable to determine the difference between Singapore and China. While the intent of the Senate Judiciary Committee sounds valid - big tech has a responsibility to protect kids from harm on their platforms - the bits we watched were somewhat underwhelming and blame-shifting, and we're still not entirely sure what changes came out of the whole thing.

So why did it get banned in the U.S.?

It's complicated. The U.S. has been concerned about Communism for more than a century (see: Red Scare, Cold War, McCarthyism, etc). And despite the TikTok CEO's repeated assertion that he is not, in fact, Chinese, nor a member of the Chinese Community Party, the concerns over TikTok's links to China persisted.

Back in December 2022, the Senate Intelligence Committee proposed a bill aiming to block transactions with social media companies under the influence of "foreign adversaries". By March 2024, the House of Representatives approved legislation requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok to a U.S.-based entity. Despite legal challenges from TikTok, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the sell-off mandate in January 2025. The outgoing Biden administration deferred the enforcement of the ban to the incoming Trump administration - even though it was kinda their circus, their monkeys.

Okay, so why is Trump now being hailed as TikTok's savior?

Trump joined TikTok in June 2024 (although we're too scared of the algorithm to see what he's posted because we know our own feeds will be irrevocably changed). But here's something you might have missed - waaaaay back in 2020, Trump said he was considering banning TikTok in the U.S. in order to punish China for the COVID-19 pandemic. He then went ahead and issued an Executive Order (he loves those) to ban TikTok, but it was shot down twice, in October and November 2020, by federal judges who said there wasn't any evidence to back up a ban. Scoot forward to July 2021 and President Joe Biden issued his own Executive Order revoking Trump's Executive Order. Oh, the drama.

Let's go back to President Biden's departure from office in January 2025. At the time, Biden said his administration wouldn't enforce the ban on TikTok - so anyone saying Biden banned TikTok and Trump brought it back doesn't have their facts straight. What happened is that the sell-off mandate that we mentioned above went into effect anyway, so TikTok had to remove access to the app for American users. And it did. On Sunday, January 19, TikTok went dark in the U.S. (And was inaccessible to anyone who had registered the app to a U.S.-based account overseas - like many of HUD App's employees, who are American but live and work remotely in other countries including New Zealand, where our HQ is located.)

Long story short, Trump took office, then initiated a 75-day moratorium that halts the enforcement of that law that mandates TikTok’s U.S. sell-off. So TikTok was able to come back online after 12 hours - or 16 hours, or 20 hours, depending on your sources. Long story short, TikTok was back up by Monday and the crowds rejoiced.

So what happens next?

Well, we're right in the middle of the 75-day moratorium. This is apparently to give the current U.S. administration time to explore a solution that addresses national security concerns while preventing an abrupt shutdown of the app. During this period, TikTok remains functional in the U.S., despite the law's activation on January 19, 2025.

The 75-day moratorium on TikTok will end on March 31, 2025. At that point, the U.S. government will have to either enforce the app's sell-off or find another resolution. If a deal is reached, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, may still need to address security concerns. If no solution is found, the app could again face major restrictions or even a complete ban in the U.S.

But hang on...

TikTok's future in the U.S. is a matter of intense speculation. Trump has said he'd like the U.S. to have 50% ownership in some kind of "joint venture" with TikTok. He's also praised the app for helping him reach young voters during his reelection campaign (presumably why he joined back in June 2024 - again, we're too scared of the algorithm to see what he's posting).

ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has said they won't sell. The app's U.S. business is estimated at U.S.$40-50 billion. Whoa.

And guess who attended Trump's inauguration festivities on January 20, 2025? That's right - Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok. He also reportedly hung out at Mar-A-Lago back in December 2024. Are he and Trump now besties? When the app was restored in the U.S., up popped a message: “Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”

So maybe these two bros will work together to figure something out, and we can all keep our ASMR cranial nerve exams and farm animals doing silly things and free relationship advice and fridge restocking videos and makeup tutorials? Watch this space - we don't think this story is over just yet.