A pending executive order by Donald Trump is set to fully reinstate the app after a nationwide ban kicked in on Saturday.
TikTok users in the United States gained partial access to the popular social media app on Sunday, just hours before President-elect Donald Trump’s promised reinstatement order was expected to take effect.
Earlier on Saturday, the app was taken offline after the US Supreme Court refused to rescue TikTok from a new law requiring the owner, ByteDance, to sell popular short-video app to an American company – the first such action against a widely used social media site.
Trump, who is set to be sworn in on Monday, has promised to issue an executive order immediately after he takes office and to grant the company more time to comply. On Sunday, during a rally held ahead of his inauguration, Trump proclaimed that “as of today, TikTok is back” and credited the app for winning him young voters in the November general elections.
Here’s what you need to know about the ban and Trump’s promise:
How was Trump able to reverse the TikTok ban?
President-elect Trump, who previously backed a TikTok ban, promised on Sunday to pass an executive order to halt the federal ban temporarily.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the order would “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect” and allow TikTok to find a US company to share 50 percent ownership with.
Trump had previously said in media interviews that the order would last for an initial 90 days.
Is TikTok working in the US now?
TikTok confirmed it was in the “process of restoring service” in a Sunday statement on X. The company also thanked Trump for providing “clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties”.
According to the US news outlet NPR, TikTok’s hosting providers, Oracle and Akamai, have also restored their services.
US users were greeted with a “welcome back” message on the app on Sunday and are now able to use it. The message read in part: “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the US.”
Earlier on Saturday, users accessing the site could only see a notification stating: “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
TikTok president Shou Zi Chew also sent a memo to advertisers on Sunday, saying the app would be back online for a “majority of US users”, according to a report by the tech website The Verge. “We anticipate some temporary service instability that may affect advertising in the US,” he wrote, including live ad campaigns.
Is TikTok available again in the app stores?
Not yet. New downloads via the Google or Apple app stores were not possible by Monday and only users who had downloaded the app before the ban could potentially access it. Google said it had paused downloads and cited “US legal requirements”.
Meanwhile, the Apple store said TikTok and ByteDance apps “are not available in the country or region you are in”.
The law banning TikTok stipulates steep fines for companies that provide support services for the company.
Why was the app banned?
Concerns over TikTok have persisted for years. In 2020, Trump, then US president, spearheaded a failed initial effort to ban the platform and pushed for Microsoft to acquire it. TikTok, however, agreed at the time to partner with Oracle on data protection technology.
Republicans and Democrats continued to push for a TikTok ban on national security grounds and amid concerns about data privacy leaks. Officials claimed the Chinese government could access the data of more than 170 million American users through parent company ByteDance and could manipulate the algorithm to push Chinese propaganda.
In March 2023, Congress grilled TikTok president Chew for five hours, questioning China’s alleged influence over the app. Chew insisted he had no evidence the Chinese government had accessed or requested data to access the data of US users.
However, in March 2024, lawmakers passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA). Under it, ByteDance was given an ultimatum: either divest ownership to a US entity or cease operations. In April, outgoing US President Joe Biden signed it into law. The new policy gave TikTok a January 19, 2025 deadline by which it must comply or be banned.
TikTok challenged the ban in an appeal court and then the US Supreme Court, arguing that it violated freedom of speech rights. On Friday, the court upheld the law in a stunning blow to the company. Other ByteDance applications, such as the video-editing app CapCut and the video-sharing platform Lemon8, were also blacklisted.
Are there allegations of racial scapegoating?
Analysts have voiced concern over what they say is perceived bias in the case and point out that other social media sites pose similar data-mining risks but that Tiktok is being singled out because Chinese entrepreneurs own it.
Some Chinese Americans, in particular, have labelled the ban as prejudiced and an example of racial scapegoating. There are fears that other Chinese-owned companies, like Alipay, could also be targeted, should the TikTok ban hold.
Rights groups such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) have opposed the ban in strong terms, calling it “xenophobic”.
“Calls to single out and ban TikTok for privacy-based offences that are regularly committed by American-owned companies like Meta and Alphabet are extremely hypocritical and steeped in xenophobia,” AAJC said in a statement following the bill’s signing into law last April.
What have been the reactions to the Trump order?
Some Republican lawmakers have pushed back against Trump’s announcement. On Sunday, Senators Tom Cotton and Pete Ricketts, in a joint statement, said there was no legal basis for “any kind of ‘extension’” unless ByteDance agreed to sever “ties” between TikTok and China.
The senators praised Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon for complying with the law. “We encourage other companies to do the same,” they added, warning that companies cooperating with TikTok risked “ruinous bankruptcy”.
Elon Musk, founder X and a close ally of Trump, has spoken out against a TikTok ban that he said could violate freedom of speech and expression. On Sunday, Musk reiterated his stance but said that “the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced”.
Twitter is also officially banned in China. Companies and government accounts use the platform, but only through a government-approved virtual private network (VPN).
Despite this, at a press conference on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Mao Ning urged the US to provide an “open, free, just and non-discriminatory” business environment, saying that TikTok had boosted employment in the US.
Ning also reacted to Musk’s statement, saying, “We welcome internet enterprises from all countries to develop in China as long as they comply with Chinese laws and regulations and provide safe and reliable products and services.”