By: Nicholas Tagg
TikTok is among the most popular social media platforms worldwide. The site is recognized for its continually updated trending content, including dance challenges, life hacks/tips, and cute animal videos users never knew they needed. It delivers endless hours of content tailored to your preferences, better than any other app. TikTok boasts an active monthly user base of over 120 million people in the United States alone, with many more having the app on their phones but using it less frequently. Although TikTok’s CEO is from Singapore, the platform itself is owned by ByteDance, a company partly owned by the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”). This ownership allows the CCP access to the data of over 170 million Americans with TikTok on their phones, potentially jeopardizing our national security.
Launched fully in the United States in 2018, TikTok is a Chinese fusion of various predecessor social media platforms, including Musical.ly (an app based around dance videos and lip-syncing to songs or audio clips). TikTok’s music integration and unparalleled strength of its algorithm quickly established it as a major player in the social media arena. As of 2024, the app has been downloaded over 220 million times in the United States, indicating that a significant majority of Americans have engaged with the app. Two years after its debut, India banned the app due to suspicions that China was misappropriating user data. In 2020, Trump suggested that TikTok should be prohibited in the United States or sold to an American company.
Until 2024, there was minimal progress on deciding whether TikTok should face an outright ban in the United States. The federal government prohibited TikTok on its devices, as did several state governments, including New Hampshire, all citing security concerns related to the Chinese-owned app. By early 2024, federal officials were seriously discussing the possibility of banning TikTok on national security grounds, pointing to China’s capacity to gather data from its U.S. user base and manipulate the app’s algorithm to create internal political dissent in the United States.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act passed by Congress states that no social media app with over one million users in the United States can be controlled by a foreign adversary or have a foreign adversary holding more than a twenty percent stake. If ByteDance failed to sell TikTok to an American owner, it would be illegal for app stores operating in America to distribute, maintain, or update the application. In April, Congress approved the TikTok ban with over 350 votes in the House and a 79–18 vote in the Senate. President Joe Biden signed the bill, which was set to take effect on January 19, 2025. Few policy issues in the last decade, aside from oversized spending packages, have garnered the bipartisan support that this bill has.
After the ban was set to take effect, TikTok and others swiftly sued the United States government to prevent the law from being implemented, arguing that the ban violated the First Amendment by undermining the free speech rights of millions of Americans. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s team argued to uphold the law, citing the same reasons articulated by Congress when it passed the law: national security and political manipulation. In a unanimous unsigned decision, the Supreme Court upheld the congressional ban on TikTok, asserting that taking such action to address the significant threat from China is adequate to override First Amendment concerns. TikTok was set to be prohibited in the United States until President Trump intervened and stated he would not enforce the ban. TikTok went dark in the United States for approximately twelve hours from January 18th to the 19th of 2025.
So, where do we stand now? The overwhelming majority in Congress from both parties, the previous president, and a unanimous Supreme Court decision clearly state a need for this national security threat to be addressed. Despite this concern, President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office, which paused the ban for another 75 days. He wanted his administration to have “an opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action with respect to TikTok.” It remains uncertain whether President Trump’s order to pause the ban is legal, leaving TikTok’s legal status in the United States in question.
Since President Trump signed an executive order pausing the implementation of the TikTok ban, he has faced criticism from senators within his party for halting the enforcement of a law he likely does not have the authority to stop. Moreover, it remains uncertain whether a company could convincingly argue in court that it does not have to pay the fines associated with this law due to the President’s pledge not to enforce it. This is not how the law in the United States is meant to function; a president cannot opt not to enforce laws he disagrees with, especially those passed by veto-proof majorities and approved by the Supreme Court.
For just under four weeks, the app was unavailable on any app store in the United States and could not be updated; however, users who still had it on their devices could continue using it. Then the situation changed, on Thursday, February 13th, TikTok returned to the two major app stores in the United States. This is a risky move by Google and Apple, which, if found to be out of compliance with this new law, could face combined fines of up to $850 billion a day. Whether ByteDance will sell TikTok (though it seems highly unlikely) by April 5th, as outlined in the executive order, remains to be seen. Until then, the status of this popular social media app and the state of the passed law banning it are uncertain due to an edict from the President.
Student Bio: Nicholas Tagg is a second-year law student at Suffolk University Law School. He is a staff writer for the Journal of High Technology Law. Nicholas received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Economics from Boston College in 2020. Nicholas spent almost three years working in the Massachusetts State Legislature between undergrad and law school.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
