Tick tock, TikTok

By SSN Staff
Updated 10:12 AM CST, Wed January 22, 2025
If you placed a bet that a social media app would be the most talked-about national security topic during Presidential Inauguration week, time to collect your winnings.
In the days leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration for his second nonconsecutive term as U.S. president, TikTok shared the spotlight with the incoming leader of the nation as the app’s China-based owner, ByteDance, was given a Jan. 19 deadline by outgoing President Joe Biden to divest itself of TikTok, based on legislation he signed into law in April 2024
Citing national security concerns, the law placed a U.S. ban on the social media platform – used by 170 million people here in the States – beginning one day prior to Trump’s inauguration unless it was sold to a government-approved buyer not based in China.
In December, ByteDance lost its first legal attempt to overturn the law when a panel of three federal judges unanimously rejected TikTok’s argument that the law violated the First Amendment.
Then on Jan. 17, two days before TikTok’s ban would take effect, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the company’s appeal, setting the stage for 170 million disappointed American TikTok users who enjoy watching the app’s short-form videos on their smartphones.
My wife and kids represent three of those 170 million U.S. TikTok users (I have the app on my phone, but never use it), and sure enough when they tried to log on to TikTok late Saturday night/Sunday morning, they were greeted with “Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now.”
OMG – 170 million panic-stricken Americans were now unable to watch TikTok videos or generate their own videos on their phones. What to do? What to do?
Fear not, U.S. TikTok users. President Trump, in one of his first official acts after being sworn-in, came riding into the Oval Office on his white horse and issued an executive order suspending the enforcement of the TikTok ban that had taken effect the previous day, essentially tossing a lifeline to the app, as well as its 170 million users here in the U.S. As outlined in Trump’s executive order, the attorney general was instructed to delay the ban by 75 days.
So, what exactly are the national security concerns that have emerged since TikTok joined forces with its competitor, Musical.ly, in 2017? Well, the main cyber concern that has permeated throughout TikTok’s existence is that the Chinese government could manipulate content and gain access to sensitive user data through the app, especially from vulnerable groups like teenagers.
In addition, there have been concerns from politicians that TikTok and ByteDance may put sensitive user data, such as location information, into the hands of the Chinese government, citing laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations.
In 2019, the U.S. government launched a national security review of TikTok, specifically looking at ByteDance’s merger with Musical.ly, noting lawmakers’ concerns about TikTok’s censorship and data collection methods, including that TikTok was censoring content that was not in line with the Chinese government.
While this security cloud continues to hang over TikTok, now that a lifesaver was thrown into the water for the app, courtesy of Trump, what does the future hold for one of the top social media apps in the U.S.?
I’m sure there could be legal challenges to the executive order, but who knows how long those proceedings would take. Meanwhile, the app itself could degrade over time and ultimately become unusable if companies like Apple and Google cannot distribute or update TikTok on their respective app stores. Who knows, maybe ByteDance will give in and sell TikTok to an American company, and everything will be hunky dory.
Trump himself called for a TikTok ban due to national security concerns during his first term but seemed to turn an about face – while seemingly shrugging off the national security issue - when asked about TikTok’s future during his Oval Office press conference on his first night back running the country, especially after his executive order rescued the app earlier in the day.
“TikTok is worthless, worthless if I don’t approve it, it has to close,” he told reporters. “I learned that from the people that own it. If I don’t do the deal, it’s worthless, worth nothing. If I do the deal, it’s worth maybe a trillion dollars, a trillion.”
The heck with TikTok’s worth; I sure hope that national security is not worthless to our “new” president. Guess we’ll see what happens over time. Tick tock, TikTok.
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