How Trump ended the TikTok blackout

2025-01-20

Donald Trump has brought the social media app TikTok back to life in the United States after an outage lasting less than 24 hours. The platform run by Chinese-owned ByteDance went offline for US users, with the firm saying it acted to comply with a law that banned it unless it sold its US operations to local owners. The law was passed with US politicians citing national security concerns. But it only took a promise from the incoming president to sign an executive order delaying the ban to get content cr...

Donald Trump has brought the social media app TikTok back to life in the United States after an outage lasting less than 24 hours.

The platform run by Chinese-owned ByteDance went offline for US users, with the firm saying it acted to comply with a law that banned it unless it sold its US operations to local owners.

The law was passed with US politicians citing national security concerns.

But it only took a promise from the incoming president to sign an executive order delaying the ban to get content creators and scrollers back online.

Today, Vittoria Elliott from WIRED on why the TikTok ban failed and what happens next.

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Vittoria Elliot, WIRED reporter covering platforms and power

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