Trump wanted to ban TikTok. Will his return to office help save it?

(Michael Dwyer / Associated Press)

Nov. 22, 2024 3 AM PT

The fate of TikTok in the U.S. has been up in the air since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to ban the popular video app because of national security concerns.

That set off four years of back-and-forth between the app’s Chinese owners and the U.S. government, with a possible ban scheduled to go into effect one day before Trump’s inauguration in January.

One hitch: Trump recently changed his mind, joining TikTok in June and posting on social media, “Those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump.”

“We’re not doing anything with TikTok,” he said.

That has given some creators hope.

“The fact that Trump did a whole 180 and wants to wait and reassess how everything is going with TikTok — I think we’re going to be OK,” said creator Kat Vera, 34, who posts fitness and car content and has 457,000 followers on TikTok.

But there are factors that complicate the app’s position. Several legal experts and tech industry observers said the path forward for TikTok is still precarious.

“It’s just a huge mess, and it isn’t clear,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.

In April, President Biden signed a law passed by Congress that would require TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest its ownership of TikTok by Jan. 19 or face a ban in the U.S. due to security concerns about the app’s ties to China.

Biden has the option to extend ByteDance’s deadline, but some legal experts said that is unlikely. Changing the law would require approval by Congress, they said. Instead, some believe that the matter could be settled in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

TikTok and ByteDance sued the U.S. government in May, alleging that banning the app would violate 1st Amendment rights to freedom of speech and that the new law “offers no support for the idea” that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses national security risks.

Experts said they expect that the court will make a decision next month. If the court rules in favor of TikTok and ByteDance, then the law will be declared unconstitutional and the government is unlikely to appeal under the incoming Trump administration.

But if the court rules against the app and the tech giant, they could appeal to the Supreme Court and ask to have the new law paused, said Michael Stovsky, a partner at law firm Benesch in Cleveland.

“They’re gonna probably ask the court to say, ‘Look, don’t enforce the law. Don’t require it to divest until the Supreme Court has heard the case,’” Stovsky said.

Representatives for TikTok and the Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment.

In a court filing, TikTok and ByteDance said that they’ve tried to work with the government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to address security concerns since 2019.

Under the terms of a deal spelled out in a 90-page draft agreement, information collected about TikTok users in the U.S. was to be handled by U.S. tech giant Oracle. The proposed agreement also called for Oracle to inspect TikTok’s programming code for vulnerabilities and for the platform’s content to be subject to independent monitoring.

If TikTok did not comply, the draft agreement called for financial penalties and also included the possibility of suspending TikTok’s operations in the U.S. TikTok and ByteDance said it’s unclear why the committee ultimately determined the proposed agreement was insufficient.

Meanwhile, Trump has changed his tune about TikTok, at least in part for apparently personal reasons and his animus for the app’s rivals. Earlier this year he called himself a “big star on TikTok.”

“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in March, referring to Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook’s parent company, Meta. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”

Republican leaders have accused the social media site of censoring conservative viewpoints, which Facebook disputed, saying it has guidelines that “do not permit the suppression of political perspectives.”

Trump, who has 14.6 million followers on TikTok, joined the popular video app months after he met with Jeff Yass, a ByteDance investor, major Republican Party donor and co-founder and managing partner of Susquehanna International Group, but Trump told CNBC they did not discuss TikTok.

People who had worked for Trump also have joined TikTok’s cause. Club for Growth, a conservative economic organization, hired former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway to advocate for TikTok in Congress, according to Politico.

But the Trump administration will have to deal with differing viewpoints within the Republican Party on TikTok, with some preferring a hard line toward China.

“I think it’s going to become a chip in a much larger game involving tariffs with China, security agreements, all that, and that TikTok is going to be part of a bigger equation,” said Freddy Tran Nager, associate director of USC Annenberg’s Digital Social Media master’s program.

TikTok has a significant presence in Culver City, employing roughly 440 people there, according to city estimates. The company, which has 170 million U.S. users, has been an important content promotion tool for video creators, small businesses, music artists and Hollywood studios.

Earlier this year, TikTok notified the state of California that it would lay off 58 employees in Culver City in July “due to restructuring.” Positions affected included senior business analysts and global product specialists.

Many creators have already diversified into publishing their content on other platforms, so they aren’t solely reliant on TikTok. Some say the moneymaking opportunities are better on rival services.

Theodora Moutinho, a fitness creator and actor from Glendale, said she has learned to always adapt in the fast-changing world of social media.

The 25-year-old became a creator in 2017 and today has 4.2 million followers on Instagram, 1.3 million on TikTok and 421,000 on Snapchat. These days, she’s putting more effort into her Snapchat and Instagram accounts, while keeping an eye on newer platforms such as Bluesky.

“Ever since it was up in the air that they were going to take it off, not take it off, I kind of stopped really focusing on it,” Moutinho said of TikTok. “Because why try to grow something if it might come down?”

Times news researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.