TikTok Restores Services After Trump Executive Order

TikTok briefly shut down, but have restored services after a Trump executive order extending the deadline.

The TikTok story seems to update by the hour. On Friday, we reported about how the US Supreme Court blessed the mass government censorship of TikTok, silencing American’s for their speech, saying that mass government censorship protects free speech because “NATIONAL SECURITY!!!!” It was a complete nonsensical ruling that set the dangerous precedent of, among other things, that the government can censor anything it likes on the internet with little more than a whim. As a result, a wrecking ball had been sent straight into the right to free speech in the process.

In the process, users began flocking to alternative, RedNote. The fact that users weren’t rushing back to mainstream media outlets to consume mainstream media content infuriated the media who pushed to have RedNote the next social media platform to be massively censored by the government. When government officials agreed to look into this censorship, it dashed any hopes that the censorship of TikTok was just a one time thing. As a result, it proved my prediction correct that this whole scenario is a massive repeat of the Napster mistake where authorities decided to start playing a game of whack-a-mole, censoring one platform only to have three more pop up afterwards.

Despite all the hard work of Trump and Biden to have the platform banned, it seems that neither want the stigma of being behind the ban and have since changed their tune to the whole situation. It seems that sinking hundreds of thousands of jobs overnight, pissing away tens of billions in economic activity, and pissing off some 170 million American’s all just for the hell of it wasn’t the bold 3D chess move that either thought it was. Who would’ve thought???

Biden’s flip-flop on the story was noted earlier by TechDirt:

The Biden administration, which actively pushed for the ban and eagerly signed it into law, is now making a last-ditch effort to… keep the app operating, even as the Supreme Court may side with [checks notes] the administration’s own Solicitor General who last week told the court that the law needed to go into effect.

This is according to NBC reporters who have the scoop:

President Joe Biden’s administration is considering ways to keep TikTok available in the United States if a ban that’s scheduled to go into effect Sunday proceeds, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

“Americans shouldn’t expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday,” an administration official said, adding that officials are “exploring options” for how to implement the law so TikTok does not go dark Sunday.

That story comes out a few hours after a similar report detailing how President-elect Donald Trump’s team has their own plans to “save TikTok.”

President-elect Donald Trump is considering an executive order once in office that would suspend enforcement of the TikTok ban-or-sale law for 60 to 90 days, buying the administration time to negotiate a sale or alternative solution — a legally questionable effort to win a brief reprieve for the Chinese-owned app now scheduled to be banned on Sunday nationwide.

Trump has been mulling ways to save the day for the wildly popular video app, talking through unconventional dealmaking and legal maneuvers such as an executive order that would unravel the law passed by Congress last year with bipartisan support, according to two people familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

Trump has expressed a keen interest in being seen as rescuing a platform on which he’s been told he’s widely admired…

To recap this utterly stupid situation, let’s review the key facts here. Donald Trump was the first President who tried to ban TikTok during his last administration, only to have that attempt rejected by the courts as unconstitutional.

Subsequently, last year, the Biden administration joined forces with a large bipartisan majority to try a “more legal” way of banning the app, and they all celebrated when they bundled the TikTok ban with funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

Trump flipped his position after getting a big donation from a billionaire friend who happens to own a huge chunk of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. And, as noted, Trump filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, essentially asking the court to delay enforcement so that he, in his view, the super genius social media deal maker (insert sarcasm font), could swoop in and make a deal to save the app.

So, now both of these Presidents, who have both tried to ban TikTok, are suddenly both claiming they want to save TikTok just as the Supreme Court seems poised to likely allow the ban to go through… and meanwhile the kids on TikTok start embracing even crazier apps from China.

All day yesterday, you could hear various politicians in DC seemingly freak out as they watched kids eagerly embrace other Chinese apps while mocking the TikTok ban. And now it appears that the two Presidents, both of whom insisted on banning the app, are (way too late) realizing just how disconnected from kids this makes them look.

Yeah, neither president wanted to touch this TikTok ban story with a ten foot barge pole even after they pushed hard to make this happen. This undermines the political credibility of why the heck the US is even doing this in the first place. Of course, for Biden, there was nothing he could really do at that point since the laws – which he signed – were set in stone already. What’s more, it is legally problematic for Trump to do much of anything about it since, again, this is a law that was enforced by the Republican controlled US Supreme Court.

So, as we noted, TikTok began going dark on Sunday, shuttering services. However, that shutdown was apparently really temporary because by the evening of Sunday, services were restored after a Trump executive order. From NBC:

TikTok said Sunday that it would be restoring service to U.S. users after blocking it the evening before.

In a statement, TikTok said its video platform was coming back online after President-elect Donald Trump provided the necessary assurances to the company’s service providers.

“In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service,” TikTok said in a post on X. “We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.”

“It’s a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship. We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States,” the company added.

The idea of the executive order is seemingly to get 50% ownership of TikTok instead of a full divesting. As a result, the deadline to make this happen has been extended. Since April, TikTok has long stated that it is not selling, trying to end speculation that they were. Yet, that didn’t stop mainstream media from speculating who was going to buy the platform’s US operations outright. The mainstream media kept pushing out names like Elon Musk, Kevin O’Leary, and even MrBeast as people who were for sure likely going to be the ones buying it. The speculation was dumb from the get go and the fact that TikTok briefly went dark yesterday showed that they weren’t selling.

I wasn’t entirely sure how TikTok would respond to an extension since they were committed to not selling. At most, it meant that TikTok was going to remain online for the remainder of the extension before going dark again because, again, they were not selling. However, it does look like there is some interest in the 50% ownership idea.

Either way, the mainstream media is completely melting down over these developments, calling this development “dangerous”. From MSNBC:

What’s most dangerous about the anticipated TikTok executive order has nothing to do with its subject or the policy.

Simply stated, it’s one thing to quietly underenforce or even avoid enforcing an existing federal law. But it’s dangerously imperialist, on the other hand, to issue an executive order that essentially states a validly enacted statute means nothing. By deciding that the TikTok problem can be solved through 50% direct government ownership combined with other acceptable purchasers (or even the existing owners) — a solution never contemplated in the law — Trump is declaring laws he does not like can be altered, if not excised, by his simple fiat months, if not years, after their enactment.

Put another way, if Trump can erase the text of the TikTok ban, what’s to stop him from doing that to far more consequential laws?

You can just see the seething rage dripping from those words. Of all the things to get worked up over, this is what the mainstream media chooses to get all huffy over? I mean, yes, there is a heck of a lot to be concerned over the Trump presidency, but this is probably one of the more innocuous things Trump is doing. If anything, it’s partially righting a wrong made by Congress and the US Supreme Court… which is a weird combination of facts here.

What’s more, if Trump just doing what he wants to do and having no one stopping him is concerning to you now, well, thanks for finally catching up to what people like have been worried about for the last year or so. Let’s not kid ourselves, though, you, the mainstream media, brought this situation on yourselves. After all, you spent the entire election cycle taking down Biden and sane washing Trump to the point of helping to get him elected in the first place. Now, everyone gets to live with the consequences of those actions – and that includes you, the mainstream media. You made your bed, now you get to lie in it.

In the interim, it looks like the US will enjoy their beloved app, TikTok, for a little while longer at least. Nothing is set in stone as of yet and it is entirely possible that TikTok could drop the US altogether by the end of it. It really depends on what is worked out here. At the very least, though, American’s are getting a little bit of good news in all of this, so that’s something anyway.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.