Nine months after the decision was made in April, TikTok and other apps from Chinese company ByteDance have stopped working in the United States. Will they disappear forever, or just for a while?
ByteDance is hoping for the latter. The ban went into effect on January 19, and President Donald Trump's inauguration is on January 20. Donald Trump, who himself tried to ban TikTok five years ago during his previous term, has now shown mercy to the Chinese app and announced that he will extend the embargo by 90 days. Under the law signed on April 24, ByteDance would have to sell the US part of TikTok (as well as other banned apps, including the CapCut video editor and the Marvel Snap card game) to a non-Chinese investor so that the app could remain in the Apple and Google Play stores and continue to operate in the US. There were even rumors that Elon Musk would buy the American TikTok, although the producer has already denied these rumours.
In a new post on his social media platform Truth Social, Donald Trump confirmed his plans to issue an order delaying the embargo, and suggested that the United States should take possession of 50% of TikTok's shares in the joint venture.
While the ban lasts, American users are left to use TikTok via VPN or look for alternatives. Some TikTok fans, instead of moving to American Instagram or YouTube Shorts, decided to defy their government and choose the Chinese platform RedNote - according to data from the analytics company Similarweb, 3 million US users joined RedNote in one day and brought the app to the top of the App Store. It is possible that as a result of the increased popularity, RedNote will share TikTok's fate - the US bill H.R.7521 protecting against applications from foreign opponents affects applications with at least 1 million active monthly users.
