TikTok Sees Hope in Second Trump Presidency While Fighting Potential U.S. Ban

Photo Credit: Moksh Shah

TikTok is currently fighting the United States government on a potential ban enacted by the Biden administration. Meanwhile, former President Trump signals his support for the platform by joining it, despite presiding over the first ban efforts in 2020.“I’m for TikTok because you need competition,” Trump said in a recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek interview. “If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram,” Trump continues. He has criticized Meta’s platforms for suspending him after the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Appeals Court will hold oral arguments on the legal challenges to the law requiring ByteDance to divest from TikTok’s United States operations by January 19. President Joe Biden signed the law in April 2024 as part of a broader $95 billion national security package. In the law is a provision that TikTok could be banned if ByteDance does not divest.

The legislation gives ByteDance nine months to divest, with the earliest date a ban could occur happening in January 2025. The law gives the president authority to extend the divestiture period by 90 days if ByteDance has achieved “significant progress” toward divesting. TikTok is opposing the law in court, filing a lawsuit in May 2024 calling the legislation unconstitutional.“Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional, in fact, that even the Act’s sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all, but merely a regulation of TikTok’s ownership,” the lawsuit reads. Backers of the bill include former Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), and Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

Congress said it was acting on information from the Justice Department and intelligence officials, who said TikTok can collect data on its 170 million American users to share with Chinese authorities. Intelligence officials have also warned about the platform’s capacity to push propaganda to a wide number of Americans quickly.