Banned Jan. 18 and quickly reinstated Jan. 19, the popular social media app TikTok has made multiple national headlines over concerns regarding issues like censorship and data theft.
While the app is now available in the United States, the date for its ban has only been temporarily extended, in accordance with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, according to the Associated Press. Since its return, many users have reported feeling like their content is being censored in ways it previously was not, bringing the true motivations for the ban into question.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, was first investigated in October of 2019 for reasons of national security.The app was banned on select government devices the following December, according to AP.
In 2020, the president started initial action to ban the app during his first term, including preventing American companies from making transactions with ByteDance and suggesting a TikTok ban due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, according to AP.
Shortly after becoming the most downloaded app on the planet and surpassing Instagram, which is owned by an American company, TikTok moved their user data servers to the United States, according to AP.
Despite this, legislators and federal organizations became concerned about the potential of the Chinese government taking user data, and worked towards a larger app ban, according to AP.
As TikTok became more distrusted by the government, it also became a tool for young organizers. In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter movement, many organizers used #blacklivesmatter, a hashtag showing support for the movement, to discuss and plan protests, among other things, according to CNN.
The app has also been associated with support for Palestinians throughout 2023 and 2024. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called Tiktok “a tool China uses to spread propaganda to Americans, now it’s being used to downplay Hamas’ terrorism,” according to Rolling Stone.
While the app was banned, users could no longer access content, and were instead shown a message that read, “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok right now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!,” according to NBC.
Many users felt this message downplayed the president’s part in the app’s banning.
In part with this, many users argued that the app has changed since its reinstatement, making it difficult to spread content that was previously allowed.
While TikTok has denied any changes to their algorithm, there have been noticeable differences, according to MSN News. Some of these changes included users being prevented from sharing political content to more than one other user, videos criticizing the president and Elon Musk being removed, users being banned after posting political content previously allowed and limited search results when looking up political keywords, TikTok influencers said according to MSN News.
While TikTok’s ban is still confirmed to be happening, the introduction of new unconfirmed censorship changes the way the banning will be viewed by political users, who have begun to question whether the true motivation lies in data safety or censorship.