TikTok was recently banned in the U.S. for suspicion from the government believing it to being run by the Chinese Communist Party. This suspicion comes from the fact that their parent company, ByteDance, is from China.

When President Biden was in office, he started the court case against TikTok to get it banned which eventually resulted in TikTok having until January 19 to separate from ByteDance or else they would be banned in the U.S.

When the date came, TikTok still had not separated from ByteDance and ended up banned. The ban itself ended up lasting roughly for nine hours.

The reason the ban was so short was due to incoming President Trump issuing an executive order to pause the ban. President Trump and TikTok CEO Shou Chew came to an agreement that half of TikTok be owned by an American company.
The ban might not potentially happen in the future owing to the wishful belief some American billionaire may buy the company in order to fulfill President Trump’s request.

As of now, TikTok is unbanned but some users who deleted the app found they could not redownload it from the Apple App Store.

Sophomore Jordon Diaz said

Another reason for the rush to unban TikTok is that some American users have moved to RedNote or have already moved to it days prior to the ban. RedNote is a Chinese Alternative version of TikTok that is confirmed to be owned by the Chinese Communist Party.

Sophomore Alejandro Escudero said “If they make the ban permanent when it does come back I will just move to Instagram Reels.”

Within the terms and conditions of the app, users have to agree to give their data, demonstrate only the positive culture regarding China, and follow the Chinese Constitution.

Most American users could not read the terms and conditions due to it being in Chinese and did not know what they agreed to.

As a result of the sudden spike in American users, the app added a translate feature to make it easier for the app’s users to communicate.