Ban on TikTok

In January, Byte dance took down TikTok and Cap Cut. They did this as an attempt to show people how life without the platform would be. People were terrified to find that TikTok had been taken down and they could no longer scroll for a few hours at a time. Their action came after the supreme court decided to ban platform nine to zero. 

When you opened the app it stated: “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.” 

TikTok was first under scrutiny in 2020 because the government believed that Beijing could try to spread propaganda on the platform. 

Trump did support this until he gained 14.7 million followers. From this, he has been able to influence the young male voters who were the majority of his vote. In 2020 he said “we’re banning them” he also said, “what happened with China with this virus, what they’ve done to this country and to the entire world is disgraceful.” 

He then also said, “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States.” The president wanted to give large shares of the company to Walmart and Orocal. In 2024, he also stated: “young people will go crazy without it.”

It does ask an interesting question though, if data collection is the problem, then why do we need to block the app instead of them collecting data? It is most likely that they also want to block TikTok because of its influence on younger people. For example, Trump and the Biden administration both know that the platform has been Trump's primary tool for his campaign. Also, you could say it is the old people who make these decisions on young people's lives so they think they are correct by it being a waste of time.

On April 2nd, Amazon offered to buy TikTok a few days before the ban was set to take effect before it was delayed. The current time for its “go away” will be June 19th.