In October 2019, then-Senator Marco Rubio sent a letter to the Treasury Department that began a five-and-a-half year battle between the American government and TikTok. Two presidents and three administrations later, TikTok and its Chinese owner, ByteDance, face a crunch moment.
Or at least they did, until President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would extend a ban on the app by an additional 75 days. Prior to the Truth Social announcement, TikTok faced closure in the U.S., with a deal to wrest it from Chinese hands still out of reach. Venture capital firms and asset managers are still circling in the hopes that a deal can get done.
In a statement, Bytedance said the company had been in discussion with the U.S. government regarding a potential solution for TikTok U.S, but an agreement had not been executed, with “key matters to be resolved”. The company added that any agreement would be “subject to approval under Chinese law.”
If a deal can’t get done eventually and the app goes dark, as it did for about 12 hours in January, it will affect TikTok’s estimated 170 million monthly users in America — preventing the mostly young audience from seeing short videos of baby hippos, meme-spawning fitness routines featuring Saratoga Water and banana peels, and other content that has made the platform so popular.
Bipartisan proponents of a ban, though, say it’s necessary to safeguard against potential Chinese influence, and to prevent U.S. user data from leaking to China.
As this saga comes to a crucial inflection point, The Wire has traced the history of U.S. policy toward TikTok.
Noah Berman is a staff writer for The Wire based in New York. He previously wrote about economics and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe and PBS News. He graduated from Georgetown University.
