IT’S RARE for a journalist to be the bearer of good news. But that’s how it felt on Sunday when I was the first to tell 23-year-old TikToker George Kapitan that the beloved app was alive again, just 16 hours after a dramatic Saturday night shutdown.
“Okay,” George said. “I guess it works.”
Honestly, not the moment of jubilation I’d been expecting. George had told me that he and his friends had held a farewell for the social network the night before. “I was really sad,” he said. “We got together, made dinner, had ice cream. A little going away party for TikTok.”
Maybe George’s calm reaction was because nothing about the app feels certain. Sure, it was loading now. But for how long? And under whose control? TikTokers now realize the fragility of their digital home and its status as a geopolitical football. Its existence still hangs in the balance despite the temporary reprieve put in place over the weekend.
George credited the app with aiding his burgeoning career in marketing, learning the ropes from how-to videos, trusted mentors and other content the algorithm learned he was looking for. He now works at L’Oreal SA.
But political leaders have long feared this kind of productive use covers the app’s potential as a vector for espionage and disruption by the Chinese Communist Party. For that reason, Sunday had been set as the deadline for parent company ByteDance to divest the app or face being cut off from the American market. And so it came to pass on Saturday night, not long before 11 p.m. Eastern Time: TikTok had gone dark, yanked from mobile app stores.
The controversial but decisive action was backed last April by a bipartisan vote in Congress, signed into law soon after by President Joe Biden, and deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court last week on the grounds of national security.
And yet, in less than 24 hours, TikTok proved itself to be something extraordinary: an app too popular to ban. A disturbing precedent, even if you oppose the ban’s debatable rationale.
At the very least, TikTok’s rapid return ruined plans for the “funeral” that had been set to take place in New York’s Washington Square Park on Sunday afternoon. Nestled within the campus of New York University, the park can credibly claim to be the physical center of American TikTok culture. Its towering Roman arch and fountain are now recognizable as a backdrop to some of the app’s most viral content.
Alas, in the frigid conditions, the journalists outnumbered the “real people,” as one young attendee reasonably put it. I guess it’s hard to motivate people to attend a funeral when the subject of mourning isn’t actually dead.
TikTok does remain on life support, however. The current and incoming presidents’ promises of a free pass may have been enough to convince the country’s biggest technology companies to break the law and continue partnering with TikTok on its infrastructure, but they still risk gigantic fines without more concrete assurances.
An executive order is expected to be confirmed on Monday, Donald Trump’s first day back in office. It may set off another countdown, a 90-day period in which some kind of deal must be made. This would be a generous interpretation of the law, which had insisted an extension could only be granted if a serious deal was already in the process of being thrashed out. We seem far from that.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump suggested one solution: some kind of joint venture with the US government owning half. Nothing about ByteDance’s statements to date suggest it would find such an arrangement palatable (to say nothing of how users might feel about a state-owned social network). A joint venture with China retaining control of the algorithm would not allay any concerns on national security.
The chain of events should be highly concerning to all of us. The three branches of government played their roles as assigned. The app should, by all accounts, be inaccessible to Americans. The reasoning behind the action has not changed. Even if it had, the solution to bad lawmaking should be better lawmaking. If Washington considered the TikTok threat real last year, it should believe the same thing now, even in the face of being disliked. I believe it’s what they call backbone. The carrot and stick approach only works if you’re willing to actually use the stick.
Instead, we have the likes of Democrat Senator Ed Markey, who voted for the ban, jumping onto social media to tell TikTokers that he is doing everything he can to prevent the “mistake” from being enforced. A White House statement said Biden had promised to not follow through on the law he personally signed, seen by some as a last-gasp attempt at restoring some of his tattered standing with young people.
The embarrassing dithering reflected a fear among Democrats that this will be seen as Trump’s triumphant win for America’s youth. Trump clearly relishes the chance to be the president who saved the day, though his primary focus remains himself. Speaking on Sunday at a pre-inauguration rally, he reiterated how his opinion has been shaped by his own success on the platform during the election campaign.
His attempts to cultivate the vibe as TikTok’s knight — despite trying to ban it himself while he was in office — are being reinforced by the company itself. “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us,” read a notice presented to users while the app was down. TikTok’s CEO will have a front-row seat at Monday’s inauguration, joining the cabal of tech leaders now delighted to be by Trump’s side.
Despite all this, some still maintain that the Chinese-owned app’s potential to exert political influence in America is purely hypothetical. The carefully orchestrated drama of this weekend should put that claim to rest — though Trump seems ready to let it slide if he’s permitted to at least pull some of the strings.
BLOOMBERG OPINION
