TikTok users in the United States received some good news Saturday from President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump told NBC News that he expects to “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a potential ban once he takes office on Monday.
TikTok, a popular video-sharing app used by 170 million Americans, faces a ban under a bill passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April 2024.
The bill addressed concerns that Chinese-owned TikTok posed a significant threat to national security. The bill required TikTok to divest its U.S. operation in order to continue operations.
After the Supreme Court rejected Beijing-based parent company ByteDance’s argument that a ban on the app violates users’ free speech, TikTok announced on Friday that it would “be forced to go dark” on Sunday unless the Biden administration and the Justice Department provided more clarity that the ban would not be enforced beginning on Sunday.
The Biden administration has stated that it does not intend to enforce the ban, while Trump has stated that he will look for a way to keep TikTok going, including possibly finding a buyer or someone to run TikTok’s U.S. operations.
A 90-day hold on of the ban would give the Trump administration time to find a solution. “I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at,” Trump told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker over the phone on Saturday. “The 90-day extension will most likely be granted because it is appropriate. You know, it is appropriate. We must examine it closely. It’s a huge situation.”
“If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday,” Trump said to Welker.
TikTok ban: Still up in the air despite Biden administration position
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described TikTok’s Friday night statement seeking clarification from the Biden administration as “a stunt.”
“We see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday,” she declared Saturday. “We have stated unequivocally that the next administration will be responsible for implementing this law. So TikTok and other companies should address any issues with them.”
Potential buyers for TikTok’s U.S. assets include Frank McCourt, billionaire and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Kevin O’Leary, one of the hosts of the ABC reality show “Shark Tank.”
According to CNBC, another bidder emerged on Saturday: Perplexity AI, an artificial intelligence search engine company.
What time will TikTok shut down?
Since the ban takes effect on January 19, the app could become inoperable as early as 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday.
TikTok stated Friday night that it needs to “go dark” due to concerns about the enforcement of the ban on its service providers. Among them is Oracle, which stores much of TikTok’s data on its servers, reviews the app’s source code, and distributes it to app stores.
According to The New York Times, other providers include Amazon Web Services and Akamai, which distribute the app’s content.
New users would most likely be unable to download the app from either the Apple or Google app stores.
What and when anything happens is yet to be seen. “Despite the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the ban, we are entering into a sort of no man’s land with regards to how the ban will take effect,” said cybersecurity expert Theresa Payton, who served as the first female White House chief information officer in a statement.
Why does the U.S. government want to ban TikTok?
Ironically, Trump called for a ban on TikTok during his first term, citing concerns that it collected data on US citizens that could be shared with the Chinese government. TikTok has stated that it has never been asked to provide user data from the United States to the Chinese government and will not do so if asked.
In August 2020, Trump declared a national emergency over TikTok, alleging that the app gave Beijing 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.”
During his first term, Trump attempted to have the app banned, but multiple judges blocked his efforts.
Then, in 2021, President Biden issued a new executive order, stating that ByteDance “continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” and directing the Commerce Department to review and assess the risks TikTok and other apps may pose.
In December 2022, Biden signed legislation prohibiting the use of TikTok on government devices, and subsequent legislation was drafted to ban the app in the United States unless certain conditions were met.
Before voting on the ban, lawmakers expressed concern about the possibility of Beijing spying on Americans and spreading propaganda via TikTok. Following Biden administration intelligence briefings, senators, both Democrats and Republicans, stated that they were convinced TikTok posed a serious threat to national security.
TikTok users may be “skeptical” about the need for action on TikTok, but “they’ve not seen what Congress has seen,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on the Senate floor ahead of the April 2024 vote.
“They’ve not been in the classified briefings that Congress has held, which have delved more deeply into some of the threats posed by foreign control of TikTok,” Mr. Warner said.
