My friend’s dad was the first to tell us. He ran around the room like a quasi-town crier and showed us the screen declaring “a law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.”
I was helping throw a friend’s engagement party on Jan. 18, so I didn’t really have the time to scroll and say my farewells to the app. After I shared my complicated feelings on the Jan. 19 Congressional TikTok ban days ago, I tried to get off the app as much as possible. It felt like a good way to kick the habit before the government kicked it for me. Most of my friends were doubtful that it would actually happen at all, insisting there would be some last-minute change to keep it online.
But when TikTok blocked access to millions of Americans hours before the Sunday deadline, we all felt it. After the party ended, one person who could still use the app scrolled through for us while we reacted to the short videos. After a few swipes, she reached the end of the page, and we yelped. Unimaginably, inconceivably, it was the end of the road for the app that had so seamlessly integrated into our lives for the past five years.
Well — for about 12 hours.
Less than a day after TikTok went offline, it came back. People started joking about putting the half-day ban into history books, and the weight of its absence lifted. But a looming dread was left in its place.
See, there was a second part to that ban announcement.
“Unfortunately, you can’t use TikTok for now,” the app said in a pop-up. “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!”
It was a confusing bit of gratitude towards President Donald Trump, not only because he had not yet taken office on Jan. 18. Trump was the one who actually initiated the ban with an executive order during his last term in 2020. The ban gave parent company ByteDance a deadline to sell the company to a U.S. owner. Last year, Congress passed a law giving the Chinese company nine months to sell. The owners refused.
Yet Trump’s original role in the ban wasn’t being questioned. Instead, he was being heralded as TikTok’s soon-to-be savior.
When the app returned on Jan. 19, one day before Trump took office, it provided another message. Every user who opened the app would see the pop-up: “Welcome back! Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
I opened the app out of habit after it returned and was greeted with the glaring announcement. I closed it and threw the phone away from me as quickly as I could. I still haven’t gotten back on. I didn’t delete it off my phone, though. TikTok is still unavailable on the app store.
But something didn’t click. How, exactly, did Trump save TikTok before taking office? He had promised to bring the app back via executive order on his first day, but it was still Jan. 19. He was set for inauguration on Jan. 20.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez swiftly took to the internet with the same concerns. She stressed that Trump did not yet have access to presidential powers – and the message was nothing more than propaganda.
That looming dread was growing larger. Just days ago, I lamented the loss of TikTok as the final social media to not pledge fealty to President Trump. It wasn’t the perfect bastion of free speech, but it was better than the owner being a part of the presidential cabinet. Now, this app had fallen in line with the president’s bully pulpit.
The next day, TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump. It seemed settled then: TikTok would return with some deal cooked up by President Trump, and all of the major social media sites would coalesce around a president rapidly rolling back rights and protections for marginalized groups.
I know it’s hypocritical, but I struggle to get back on TikTok. Don’t get me wrong: I still spend hours a day on X. I justify that in part because I use the app to keep updated on Atlanta news and read articles from my favorite writers, but mostly I’m just addicted. I am part of the problem.
But it’s easier for me to refuse to pick up TikTok again. That’s not the case for everyone else.
As soon as it returned, TikTok’s activity came roaring back. My friends got right back onto their feeds like nothing had ever happened. Trump announced a 90-day extension on the required sale and offered a compromise that would give a U.S. company 50 percent ownership. Billionaire Frank McCourt and YouTuber Mr. Beast have both thrown their hats in the ring.
Some videos of influencers crying pre-ban and celebrating after TikTok’s return made their way onto my other social feeds. One in particular stuck with me.
LGBTQ+ Beauty influencer James Charles thanked Trump in a video with over 800,000 likes.
“Now I’m rooting for Trump, ew, make America f—king great again, I guess,” Charles said.
It’s unclear if Charles is fully joking in the video. I think he is, but that’s not really what matters. Even jokingly, an influencer with over 40 million followers on TikTok is lauding Trump for saving TikTok.
An app dominated by members of Generation Z and Generation Alpha. Several of those users make their living on TikTok, and that living was seemingly just threatened by the Biden administration and saved by the Trump administration. No matter that Trump tried to ban it in the first place because he changed his tune.
Some have raised alarms about censorship, saying that words like “fascism” and “Palestine” are being blocked from search engines. There’s little to prove this is true — I had my roommate test the theory (since I’m off the app) and she had no problems searching.
Active censorship is not my main concern, though the nefarious reality of algorithms and alt-right pipelines is ever-present. I’m more worried about the implications.
Simply put, it feels like the end of online free speech. That seems dramatic, obviously. In a legal sense, social media has never been a free speech haven because it doesn’t have to be. The First Amendment right is applicable to public forums, not privately owned sites. It’s a precarious thing.
But sites like X and TikTok still built up a mythology for being bastions of dialogue and discourse. The fragile premise of these free speech havens has since shattered – these are places made to cater to Trump and his every whim.
TikTok is back, but at what cost?
