What’s next for TikTok?

Creators who posted secret-revealing videos🤝Regret.

Following a voluntary shutdown on Saturday night, TikTok’s US service was restored around midday Sunday. The move followed a promise from now-President Donald Trump to issue a Day 1 executive order extending the ban’s deadline; he signed one to halt federal enforcement for 75 days on Monday.

But legal and political questions remain.

• The ban technically took effect Sunday. And legal experts say it’s unclear if an executive order can temporarily halt a law – passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court – from taking effect.
• TikTok is currently unavailable for download on both Apple and Google’s app stores, which experts say is due to the risk of potential legal penalties. The ban stipulates that any company found working to support TikTok faces fines of $5,000/user – which, multiplied by the app’s ~170 million US users, could add up to a lot of dough.

On a potential sale: Search engine startup Perplexity AI has reportedly submitted a bid to merge itself with TikTok US; former LA Dodgers owner Frank McCourt is spearheading “The People’s Bid for TikTok”; and Elon Musk has been floated as another potential suitor (which ByteDance denies). Experts say any potential sale of TikTok’s US operations is unlikely to include the app’s algorithm, given opposition from Beijing.

✍️ Full circle: Trump kicked off the TikTok-ban process with an executive order in 2020 – and now, with an executive order, could be keeping it alive.