TikTok is coming back online in the US

TikTok has announced that, after going away for about half a day, its service is coming back on in the US. The company posted on X that it is “in the process of restoring service” and thanked President Trump for “providing the necessary clarity” to do so.

TikTok:

In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. 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.

TikTok shut out US users last night ahead of the US federal ban’s deadline, displaying a message to users that said it was making its “services temporarily unavailable” due to the ban.

Some users, including me, were able to start accessing TikTok over the last hour or so in mobile and desktop web browsers, which means TikTok’s hosting provider Oracle is relying on Trump’s “clarity and assurance” in order to provide services. TikTok sent a memo to advertisers Sunday afternoon letting them know that its service will “become available for the majority of U.S. users” and that ad campaigns will resume with “certain limitations” on live campaigns.

However, the app remains unavailable in Apple’s App Store and on Android via Google Play, which suggests those companies are still not comfortable with the risk of breaking the law, which is still in effect. Both app stores currently display messages explaining why the app isn’t available if you’re searching for TikTok:

Screenshot: Google Play app store

Screenshot: iOS App Store

After the Biden administration declared that enforcement “will be up to the next administration to implement,” Trump posted today that he was planning to delay the TikTok ban. He said it would require that the app be sold, possibly with “a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50 percent ownership.”

Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Pete Ricketts put out a joint statement Sunday morning saying there was “no legal basis” to extend the ban’s effective date beyond January 19th while praising Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for pulling the app from their stores. Both had called “some of the major tech companies in recent days to say they needed to comply with the law,” according to The New York Times.

There are no updates yet on what TikTok’s partial return means for the other ByteDance-linked apps that users have been locked out of, such as CapCut and Marvel Snap.

TikTok, Google, Apple, Amazon, Oracle, and Akamai have not responded to our requests for further comment.

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