Tiktok Ban Revisited

Jan 24, 2025 at 02:22PM

The TikTok ban is something that is difficult to even follow the history of even for some of us who follow technology news.

So I’ll try to highlight the important parts of the whole process in this article.

First Trump-era Ban

On August 6th, 2020, Trump signed the first ban of TikTok. Yes, that year. So whether his concerns of privacy and safety was justified, or he was doing it over some political posturing after perceiving China as the main perpetrator of early COVID-19 spread; has yet to be decided.

But the ban essentially gave Bytedance, the owner of TikTok, some time to sell off the US-based entity of it or face being banned.

Bytedance and Oracle Partnership

Originally, Bytedance did enter an agreement to allow their US entity of TikTok to be purchased by Microsoft. Then it fell through after they faced some behind the doors backlash from the Chinese government.

A bit of time after, they entered an agreement with Oracle. Which allowed Oracle to own and maintain the datacenter hosting any data pertaining to US-based users of TikTok, for a share of the profits.

Even though this move technically appeased the security concerns initially argued by Trump’s ban, the administration decided to go through with conducting the ban. Bytedance and Oracle then filed the proper proceedings to challenge the ban, winning for the most part.

Biden-era Ban

Originally the Biden administration undid the ban which the Trump administration placed on TikTok in the first place, maintaining the then-Democrat opinion that the ban was unjust.

Then starting in 2022, it was revealed that the Chinese entity of TikTok could access information stored on Oracle’s TikTok datacenter. Later on it was also revealed that Bytedance had granted a superuser credential to the PRC government.

These discoveries flipped the switch on many politicians who originally opposed the ban in the first place. Which lead to a reinstatement of the ban in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary-Controlled Applications Act.

Trump Reversing the Ban

One of Donald Trump’s first measures while taking office was to sign an executive order to pause the ban on the app for now.

Potential Aftermath

Which even though I’m for banning the app because of its detrimental effect on society we’re seeing due to it (especially for children), I think that maybe reversing the ban might force politicians and their constituents into imposing consistent rules on privacy rights as well as minimum age requirements for certain kinds of apps.

One can only hope though.