The TikTok Ban

On January 18th, 2025, from 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM EST, users of the short-form media powerhouse TikTok were greeted with a message informing them of, due to enforcement of a ban from the government, the app was now unusable nationwide in the United States.

This might have come to a shock to some of its users, having gone on to scroll unconsciously, as many would have beforehand. However, this ban was heavily advertised, the government themselves having warned TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell to a US company, or face the enforcement of this legislation.

TikTok was created in 2016 by the Chinese company ByteDance, under the name Douyin. It became popular in 2017 as TikTok overseas, and skyrocketed to popularity, holding its position in the public zeitgeist steadily for years.

Suspicions over how ByteDance, a Chinese-based company, having access to its user’s data, however, and serving as a direct input to many citizens on American-based news, had led to the Biden cabinet signing the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2024.

If all were to have gone normally, TikTok would have been banned for good in the US, until either ByteDance had sold to a US company as dictated in the original proposal in the act, or a similar short-form content app would have taken its place such as Instagram Reels or YouTube shorts. However, it did not go this way.

TikTok was only down for roughly less than 12 hours, serving as a quick and shocking turn of events for both users and outsiders looking in. The situation had presented itself in a way that, as an outsider, might have proved suspicious.

During the buildup to the ban, President-Elect Donald Trump had been very vocal in promising to delay this ban. In the message itself during the short period from the ban, it is mentioned how TikTok was “fortunate” that President Trump was “working” with them on a solution to reinstate the app.

This was followed through by an executive order written by the president on his first day in office, granting ByteDance until April 5 to be sold. However, questions have been raised, and the situation presents the importance of an app like TikTok in a frequently unwieldy sociopolitical environment.

TikTok presents itself as a way for anyone to make their voice known, whether that be better or worse. When TikTok was under threat from the ban, its users found themselves at a crossroads.

The history that had surrounded the app, the different trends, the different ways people had hopped on or off different things or ideas relating to popular culture, media and fandom were all in and of themselves precious.

This makes itself known wholeheartedly just from how TikTok is structured. A nonpartisan, independent app that allows users to present themselves to others in any way that fits the guidelines, is an incredibly desirable and tempting environment.

In a technological world where it feels as though companies find themselves trying to appeal the most to those in power such as Meta backing away from their fact checking policies in the midst of an oncoming change in administration; an app like TikTok is vital.

Having no one political structure finding itself owning such an app allows for users to speak freely and allows for them to intake information and news without fear of possible misinformation, skewing, or shadow-banning (where a topic is silently filtered from view on social media). The users themselves, both in the time leading up to and during the ban, were afraid of the alternative.

In this fear, some users even made the pilgrimage to the app Rednote, which had facilitated a mainly local Chinese audience, and was also owned and based in the country. Users were willing to go to places where many people had not spoken English, all for the chance to be free from the possibility of a social media giant being affected by a government policy.

The situation relating to the TikTok ban, and the events that had taken place afterwards, had showcased how easy it is to get suspicious of government intervention in social media. From dedication in messages to direct interference from executive orders, it is easy to focus on the possibilities and suspicions.

Possibilities and suspicions do not change the fact; however, it is immensely important that TikTok remains what it has been, with that being a place that is uninfluenced from any one government or overlying entity. People deserve to have a place where they can get unbiased news sources that might be stifled if any place of power deems it to be misinformation or fake news.

When an app like that is taken away, creativity and the idea of “free speech” can be changed then past international barriers, past what speech in and of itself can mean.

In the context of TikTok, free speech on such a platform is also the freedom of expression, both of which often so heavily go hand in hand. With TikTok, people can see what they want, when they want, and then approach it how they want.