US users were briefly cut off from the popular video-sharing platform after a federal ban took effect on Saturday. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to pause the ban, citing its coincidental timing and his desire to work with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Supreme Court ruled that the risk to national security posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighed concerns about limiting speech by the app or its millions of US users. However, Trump’s plan to spare TikTok reflects a unique mix of political considerations surrounding a social media platform.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration with a prime seating location, and the president-elect has credited TikTok with helping him win support from young voters in last year’s presidential election. Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s US business.
Lawmakers and administration officials have warned about the algorithm’s vulnerability to manipulation by China, but there is no guarantee that Trump will remain a fan of the platform. The Biden administration has also stressed that it does not intend to implement or enforce the ban before Trump takes office on Monday.
TikTok returned online on Sunday after being removed from prominent app stores and Apple’s support page earlier in the day. Experts say that the law as written did not require TikTok to take down its platform, only for app stores to remove it.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-trump-biden-china-bdc79b7ce741a81761f67ea56d410103