A TikTok ban in the US that’s been in the works for years started early on Saturday with the company locking down US users — but the entire saga remains more about politics than national security.
As of January 19, 2025, TikTok is no longer accessible within the US. The app is being removed from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store, plus Oracle must now stop hosting the service’s US user data.
Those existing users will see only an explanatory pop-up message on launching the app. TikTok’s owners, Chinese firm ByteDance, is said to be working to allow users to download their data and personal information.
The second notification sent to users with the app installed cites some sort of discussion taking place with president elect Donald Trump, despite him being the architect of the ban in the first place.
A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TokTok for now
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!
How we got here
The ban is really the culmination of years of politics, but ostensibly, the reason is that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company. It’s alleged that therefore that China could compel the company to provide it with confidential US user data.
President Trump proposed the ban in 2020,
“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” he said in August 1, 2020. “Soon, immediately. I mean essentially immediately. I will sign the document tomorrow.”
It was on August 7, 2020, that Trump signed the Executive Order banning TikTok, and giving it a deadline of September 20. The order specified that such Chinese-owned apps continue “to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
The order cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and prohibited any transaction between US firms and TikTok’s owner, ByteDance. Before the September deadline, ByteDance was said to be in talks that would see Oracle take over its US business, and Trump publicly approved the deal — initially.
He then scuttled this Oracle/TikTok deal in September 2020. It’s not known why, but conceivably it was believed that the Oracle deal would not assuage security concerns.
TikTok’s owners have repeatedly claimed that the US security concerns were unfounded. It said that it had strong data security, and denied claims that the Chinese government had any access.
The September 2020 ban was first delayed by a US judge. It was then blocked in November 2020 by the courts as an infringement of the rights of Americans whose income was derived from their work on TikTok.
Biden signs the ban into law
The case against TikTok has not varied or expanded from the accusations of Chinese access to US user data. But in 2024, President Biden signed the ban into law.
“The path to my desk was a difficult path,” President Biden said. “It should have been easier and it should’ve gotten there sooner. but in the end we did what America always does — we rose to the moment.”
In this case, ByteDance was given nine months to divest itself of TikTok. A three-month extension would be triggered if the company was in negotiations to sell the platform.
That extension did not happen, but one thing that changed was that Trump asked in December 2024 for the ban to be paused. There doesn’t appear to be any technical, security, or legal reason for Trump’s request, but any delay would have pushed the ban into his forthcoming administration.
One other thing that arguably changed over the four years of the on/off ban threats, is that TikTok has grown significantly. According to SEO.ai,TikTok now has 150 million users in the US, compared to
82 million in 2020.
Overall, TikTok has a billion active users daily, so the loss of 150 million is significant, but not fatal. What might ultimately damage TikTok more is that news of the ban has sent users to alternatives, including RedNote — another China-based company.
