President Trump, in one of his first moves after reentering the White House on Monday, signed an executive order postponing the ban on TikTok for 75 days.
Trump said the extension will give his administration “an opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action with respect to TikTok,” which has 170 million American users.
“During this period, the Department of Justice shall take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act, including for distributing, maintaining, or updating (or enabling the distribution, maintenance, or updating) of any foreign adversary controlled application as defined in the Act,” Trump said in his executive order.
The order comes after TikTok was set to be banned on Jan. 19, following a federal law passed by then-President Joe Biden last year that called for the app to be removed from the Apple and Google app stores, unless its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, sold its American business. The law also prohibited new downloads of the app, starting last Sunday.
TikTok, less than two hours before the Jan. 19 ban was set to go into effect, shut down for American users on Saturday night. Then, in another twist to the ongoing TikTok saga, the app restarted about 14 hours later in the U.S. TikTok, when it reemerged on Sunday, included a thank you note to Trump for “providing the necessary clarity and assurance” the app and its providers would not be punished for violating the ban.
The chief concern U.S. lawmakers had with TikTok is that it doubles as a spyware app for the Chinese Communist Party. ByteDance, if compelled by China’s government, is required by law to share TikTok user data, including keystroke and location information.
Some users expressed concerns over the CCP’s ties to the app at a TikTok-sponsored inauguration party on Sunday in Washington, D.C.;most of the attendees, though, said they supported Trump’s plan to “save” TikTok.
Moving forward, it will be worth seeing if Trump’s executive order withstands legal scrutiny. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous 9-0 ruling last week, upheld the law banning TikTok.
Lily Li, a tech-focused attorney for Metaverse Law in Newport Beach, told TheWrap an executive order could give TikTok “more leeway to find an alternative divestment opportunity, just given the amount of time it would take to go through the court to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to challenge this executive order.”
