What we know about the TikTok ban

On By Littum

As of Saturday night, TikTok, the short-form video app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, was unavailable in the United States as a result of a new law banning the company’s apps in the country. Around noon on Sunday it was back.

Although the law calls for ByteDance to sell TikTok to non-Chinese owners or face a ban starting Sunday, TikTok said it was responding to new “clarity” from President-elect Donald J. Trump when it restored the service.

Mr. Trump promised early Sunday to halt implementation of the ban to give TikTok more time to make a sale that would comply with the law. It is still not clear how he will be able to do that.

TikTok feeds stopped working in the US late Saturday night. Instead of videos, the app showed a pop-up message to users saying that a law banning TikTok was passed in the United States and that “President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution for to reinstate TikTok when he takes office.” It added: “Please stay tuned!”

Then around noon on Sunday, the app worked again.

“In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will not face any penalties for providing TikTok,” the company said in a statement.

In practice, the law penalizes app stores like Apple and Google and other Internet companies like Oracle for distributing or updating TikTok content.

It is not clear whether Mr. Trump can stop the ban under the law, but he has promised to do so. Mr. Trump said on social media platform Truth Social on Sunday that he would issue an executive order on Monday that would “extend the period before the law’s ban goes into effect so we can reach an agreement to protect our national security.”

He also said he planned to arrange a deal that would give the US a 50 percent stake in a new entity involving TikTok, but it was unclear what form that would take. “Without US approval, there is no Tik Tok,” he wrote. “With our approval, it’s worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”

The new law has a provision that says a president can issue a one-time 90-day extension to the ban if he or she certifies to Congress that a “qualified divestment” is underway and that it could take place in the period. But it is not clear whether he can take advantage of that opportunity now that the law has come into force. The law was passed by Congress with broad bipartisan support, signed by President Biden and now upheld by the Supreme Court. So simply undermining it now will raise serious questions.

Sarah Kreps, the director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, said Mr. Trump’s options now are “uncharted legal territory.”

US officials have long been concerned about ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government. They have pointed out that ByteDance could hand over sensitive US user data to Beijing, such as location information, citing laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations.

They also worry that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations to fuel misinformation, a concern that escalated in the US after the start of the Israel-Hamas war and during the presidential election.

TikTok has long maintained that it has never misused data or spread propaganda at the behest of Beijing in the US. It has tried to distance itself from ByteDance, considered one of the world’s most valuable start-ups, by saying that TikTok is headquartered in Singapore and Los Angeles and that ByteDance is largely owned by global investors . But there are still employees in China working on TikTok, even though TikTok itself is not used in China.

Yes. Mr. Trump tried to orchestrate a sale of TikTok to US companies in 2020 and tried to ban the app — an effort that was ultimately struck down by federal courts. He publicly changed his stance on TikTok last March, shortly after meeting with Jeff Yass, a billionaire Republican megadonor who owns a significant stake in ByteDance, although Mr. Trump has said they did not discuss the company.

He also enjoyed his success on the app during the 2024 election, where he now has over 14 million followers. He has credited the app with helping him win over young voters. In his message on Sunday, he noted that he wanted TikTok users to be able to enjoy his inauguration on the app.