TikTok is once again available in the US, with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, citing a promise from President-elect Donald Trump that no US service providers of the platform will face penalties. Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday to temporarily keep the app running, giving ByteDance more time to find a buyer for the US arm of TikTok. He also urged app stores, including Google and Apple, not to ban the app, having previously given it an additional three-month reprieve.
Without US approval, TikTok is worthless, Trump said, adding that with his approval, the app could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, or even trillions. The app, which is owned by a Chinese company, had stopped operating in the US and was removed from app stores over the weekend. The US government had given ByteDance a deadline of January 19 to sell the US business, but the company failed to meet the deadline.
The US Supreme Court had earlier confirmed the constitutionality of a law aimed at protecting American users from foreign-controlled apps, citing national security concerns. Other ByteDance apps, such as CapCut and Lemon8, were also removed from US app stores. As TikTok went offline, a Chinese rival app, RedNote, became the most downloaded free app on Apple’s app store, and millions of Americans switched to the new app, using the hashtag #tiktokrefugee.