Sarah Parvini and Mark Sherman, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — After Tiktok was banned in the US earlier this year, President Donald Trump gave the platform a reprieve, passing legislation passed by Congress and was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court, which stated that a ban was necessary for national security.
The Republican president’s executive order has spurred more than 130 lawsuits in the two months he has been in office, but this has hardly been peeked out. None of these lawsuits challenge his temporary block of the 2024 law that banned popular social video apps after the deadline sold by China-based parent company Bytedance ended.
Of the 431 members of the House of Representatives, most of the Senate members who voted for the law complained.
Sarah Klepps, director of the Institute for Technology Policy at Cornell University, said:
Tiktok stays online and delights 170 million users in the US
Tiktok continues to function with a great delight to 170 million US users, and The Tech Giants Apple, Google and Oracle have been persuaded to continue to provide and support the app with a promise that Trump’s Justice Department will not use the law in search of potentially sudden fines.
Trump has declared that he has suspended the law for 75 days, and although there is no provision for rules to allow it, this gives a new opportunity to find US buyers. The president has suggested he could extend the suspension, but he has since said he has been expecting a deal by Saturday, when the grace period expires. He met with an aide on a possible suitor for Tiktok on Wednesday. Oracle and investment company Blackstone are one of the potential investors.
Trump’s actions ended with an unanimous Supreme Court ruling just days before Trump took office, following the challenge of quickly tracked free speech by Tiktok and his users.
The court’s opinion was at length about the possibility of collecting huge amounts of Tiktok users data from Tiktok users, which could allow China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors.
“Our previous records establish that Tiktok is mining data from around millions of people who do not agree to share their information with Tiktok users,” Judge Neil Gorsuch wrote in a simple separate opinion. “According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tiktok has access to “any data” stored in the “contact list” of consented users. Your name, photographs and other personal information are meaningless personal information about third parties. ”
Tiktok, headquartered in Singapore and Los Angeles, said it prioritizes user safety, and China’s Foreign Ministry said it never asks businesses to “collect or provide data, information, or information” held overseas.
Trump was against Tiktok before he could benefit from it.
The day after the verdict, Tiktok became dark for our users, but it returned online after Trump vowed to suspend the ban.
The president’s position has evolved over time. During his first term, he tried to use executive orders to ban Tiktok on national security reasons. But the federal court blocked it. His administration then attempted to negotiate the sale of the platform, but failed.
Trump changed his song during the 2024 campaign and said, “Save Tiktok,” and believed the platform helped him win more voters. He issued a 75-day hiatus on the first day of his second term.
The law allows for 90 days of reprieve, but only if there is a transaction on the table and there is a formal notice to the Congress.
Alan Rosenstin, an associate law professor at the University of Minnesota, said Trump’s actions so far have violated the law. “The law does not allow the kind of “extension” that Donald Trump has announced,” Rozenstein said.
But both he and Klepps admitted that there was unlikely to be a court challenge or other pushback.
“Who is your constituency? We have 170 million Americans using this app, and I’m so happy to see this still available,” Kleps said.
It may also be difficult for someone to establish or sue legal rights, Rozenstein said. Plaintiffs will have to be able to show harm from delays in enforcement of the law, he said.
More importantly, he said Tiktok’s executive order was an early example of “an example of the Trump administration that doesn’t care about the rule of law.”
Trump has instructed the Justice Department not to seek fines from tech companies, but they have also criticised Trump for his actions, according to Democrats opposed to the Tiktok ban. Future administrations may have their own reasons to pursue legal claims against Apple, Google and Oracle, they wrote Trump in a letter last week.
The company could be liable for hundreds of billions of dollars in legal liability to promote Tiktok’s business since the effective date of the January 19th law.
Tech companies initially lacked clear guidance
The corporations themselves acknowledged legal uncertainty in their initial response to Trump’s order. Oracle continued to provide cloud services to Tiktok, the senator said, but “However, Apple and Google initially made another decision and refused to revive Tiktok in the app store.”
The company only changed courses after receiving written assurances from the Department of Justice.
Democrats are calling for the law to be amended to extend the sales deadline until October. Other opponents of Tiktok Ban support a total abolition.
Among the few supporters of the ban is Rep. John Mourenard, chairman of the House Selection Committee on the Communist Party of China.
But rather than taking on Trump, Mourenard has focused on criticism of the ordinance and its ties. “If the ordinance is involved in any way, the transaction is illegal, simple and simple,” Moolenaar said in a statement at the Tiktok event at Capitol Hill last week.
Several potential bidders have moved forward.
Perplexity AI presented Bytedan in January and proposed a merger proposal that combines Perplexity’s business with Tiktok’s US operations.
Another possibility is a consortium hosted by billionaire businessman Frank McCourt, who recently recruited Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian as his strategic advisor. An investor in the consortium previously said it had provided $2 billion in cash to ByteDance on Tiktok’s US platform. They were planning to redesign popular apps with blockchain technology, which they said would give users more control over their online data.
Jesse Tinsley, founder of Payroll Firm Employer.com, also organized a consortium that includes the CEO of video gaming platform Roblox, providing over $30 billion to Tiktok.
Parvini reported from Los Angeles.
Original issue: April 2, 2025 7:17am EDT
