What You Missed On TikTok This Weekend

It has been a wild week on TikTok, to say the least. In case you haven’t been refreshing your feeds every 5 minutes to get the latest drama, here’s what you might have missed, and what you need to know:
TikTok got banned (Sort of)
In April 2024, the US Congress passed a bipartisan bill that required ByteDance to sell its US operations or risk being shut down on January 19th (yesterday). Despite months of speculation and groups popping up who claimed to be purchasing the app, no deals were made, so the ban was set to go forward.
There were lots of misconceptions about the ban
Of course, TikTok users were furious about the prospect of their government taking their favourite social media channel away from them, but as with most things that people yell about on the internet, there was some confusion about the details.
The law that was passed would require TikTok to shut down its US-based offices and would likely require that both Google and Apple remove the app from their stores. TikTok could continue to run on people’s phones, but services like TikTok Shop, the Creator Fund and ads would be blocked.
What actually happened?
About 12 hours before the ban was set to begin, TikTok users in the US saw a notification in their app that said (and the wording is important):

Of course, people lost their minds over not being able to log in.
But what many noticed was just how odd the messaging was. Corporations — especially tech companies — are extremely careful about their messaging, and typically never mention any political parties or individual politicians by name.
People smelled something off about the notice, because there was nothing in the legislation that required TikTok to take any kind of action, especially not anything as dramatic as this.
Then, just 10 hours later, users who tried to log in were met with the following message:

It doesn’t take a political strategist to see that this was all just a clunky way for the incoming US President to claim that he alone was able to pull your favourite social media app back from the brink of disaster, and that we all owe a debt of gratitude directly to him.
In many cases, it worked, but a lot of creators jumped back on the platform to call out the absurdity of it all.
What Now?
The next steps are entirely unclear. According to TikTok, the reason that they were able to lift their entirely unnecessary app shutdown in the US was because they were assured that none of the platforms would receive any penalties for operating TikTok during the ban period.
But that doesn’t make any sense, because TikTok shutting down user access is completely unrelated to the app stores listing TikTok for download, which is the only thing that is actually banned under the law.
The best that we can all infer from what has happened is that the US Government is simply planning not to enforce its own law, and so for now, everything appears to be back to business as usual for TikTok.
Meanwhile, on TikTok
Users reacted to the soap opera-like events in some very interesting ways:
- In the days leading up to the ban, over 700,000 TikTok users flooded to another Chinese-owned app called RedNote where they were met by some very confused, but overwhelmingly friendly Chinese users
- Creators started sharing their secrets, such as “I didn’t actually do those workouts” or “I never actually got married.” As you can imagine, now that TikTok is back, people have some big feelings about those admissions from their favourite accounts
- During the 10-hour blackout period, non-US based TikTokers shared just how peaceful the app felt with all of the Americans around and publicly aired their grievances about American creators
- A popular theory has been circulating that the “ban” was just a cover for Meta to purchase TikTok and take over its operations
What’s Next?
With TikTok so clearly and blantantly bending the knee to the incoming US administration, they have joined X and Meta as platforms that have become fully red-pilled and subservient to the whims of the President.
Interestingly, Google and YouTube have remained almost entirely out of the mix, and Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, is one of the only tech leaders who did not accept the invitation to attend today’s inauguration ceremony.
As brands, our first objective has to be to act in the best interest of our businesses and our communities, so it may well be that Meta, TikTok, or X is the best place for you to be showing up.
However, we have already started to see a blowback with people seeking out alternative channels such as Bluesky, YouTube, Snapchat, and others so there may be opportunities popping up that didn’t exist just a few weeks ago.