Getty ImagesTikTok briefly went dark in the US over the weekend, after the Supreme Court denied a bid by Chinese owner ByteDance to overturn a law banning it.
But it was back after a day with a message thanking incoming president Donald Trump for his “efforts” in restoring the app.
And one of Trump’s first actions after resuming office was to sign an executive order giving TikTok another 75 days to comply with the law that demanded it was blocked if its owners would not sell it.
So what happens now?
Has Trump overturned the ban?
An executive order is an instruction from the president which has the weight of the law behind it.
But Trump’s order does not overturn the ban law.
Instead it tells the US attorney general not to enforce it for now – something experts had expected would be his first move.
That buys time for his administration to, as the order puts it, “determine the appropriate course of action.”
Trump has floated the possibility of TikTok becoming a joint venture, telling reporters he was seeking a 50-50 partnership between “the United States” and ByteDance, though he did not give any further details on how that might work.
For now though the order creates a situation where the president is directly opposing a ruling made by the Supreme Court, which on Friday upheld a law to ban TikTok.
It said the ban was “designed to prevent China – a designated foreign adversary – from leveraging its control over ByteDance to capture the personal data of US TikTok users”.
Getty ImagesTechnically, even after the 75 days have passed, it would be possible for Trump to allow the law to stand but tell the Department of Justice (DoJ) to continue to ignore it.
The government would be effectively telling Apple and Google they will not be punished for continuing to allow people to download TikTok onto their devices, meaning the law would remain in place but would essentially be redundant.
Obviously, the firms might be uncomfortable about breaking the law even if they have been told doing so is fine – as it would be effectively requiring them to take the president’s word for it that they will not face punishment.
Who could buy TikTok?
When he signed the order, Trump said “every rich person has called me” to signal their interest in TikTok.
Up until now, ByteDance has been resolute that no sale of its prize asset in the US is on the table.
But could that change now?
Potential buyers continue to line up – with Bloomberg News reporting on Tuesday that the firm was looking at a sale to billionaire Elon Musk, though TikTok described this as “pure fiction”.
Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt are among those who have previously expressed an interest in buying it.
Mr McCourt, a former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, said he had secured $20bn in verbal commitments from a consortium of investors to bid for TikTok.
There is an even more left field – and considerably less serious – proposed owner.
The biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson – AKA MrBeast – has claimed he is now in the running to make a deal after he had billionaires reaching out to him about it.
What about TikTok’s sister apps?
TikTok was the only ByteDance app which immediately became available again after the ban – though only for people who already had the app.
It’s still unavailable to download from Apple and Google’s app stores.
But on Tuesday morning, other apps owned by the company began to become available to use in the US once again.
Two which remain inaccessible are Lemon8, another social media app which has been compared to Pinterest, and CapCut, a video editing app.
Meanwhile Marvel Snap, a digital card game published by a ByteDance subsidiary, is now available once again after it too went down – which caught even its US-based developer Second Dinner off guard.
What platforms could people turn to instead?
TikTok says it has 170 million users in the US who, on average, spent 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024.
Experts say, if Trump’s efforts fail, rivals such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts may benefit.
Users bring advertisers – so this could be a big financial boost to those platforms.
“Chief marketing officers who we’ve spoken with confirmed that they will divert their media dollars to Meta and Google if they can no longer advertise on TikTok,” said Kelsey Chickering, an analyst at market research company Forrester.
Other potential winners include Twitch, which made its name on hosting livestreams – a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is well known particularly to gamers, though it continues to grow with other content.
Other Chinese-owned platforms, such as Xiaohongshu – known as RedNote among its US users – have seen rapid growth in the US and the UK.
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