Apple and Google bring TikTok back to their U.S. app stores
Category: News & Politics
Via: perrie-halpern • one week ago • 0 commentsBy: Steve Kopack and Rebecca Cohen
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
/ Updated By Steve Kopack and Rebecca Cohen
Apple and Google have made TikTok available on their U.S. app stores again, they said Thursday evening.
TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance, disappeared from both stores in the United States on Jan. 18, hours before a ban on the social media app was set to go into effect.
It had remained unavailable to download on both Apple's App Store and Google's Play store until Thursday. However, users who had previously downloaded it could continue to use it.
Google and Apple did not comment Thursday evening beyond saying the app was available.
The ban, which is rooted in national security concerns, was the result of a law President Joe Biden signed in April that mandated that ByteDance sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner or be blocked in the United States on Jan. 19.
After a number of appeals, the Supreme Court upheld the law on Jan. 17, paving the way for it to shut down in the country.
Days before he left office, Biden's administration said it would leave enforcement of the law to the incoming Trump administration, which was set to take office Jan. 20.
TikTok restored service to the United States on Jan. 19 after having blocked it the night before, saying it had done so based on pledges from incoming President Donald Trump to save the app. Trump had indicated that he would sign an executive order "to extend the period of time before the law's prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security."
"The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
After it restored service last month, TikTok thanked "President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties for providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive" in a statement that said it would work with the White House to find a long-term solution.
The status of the law — and the app's ownership — remains up in the air.
Before the Jan. 19 declaration that the law would not yet take effect, Trump had floated enacting a provision of the law that says the president can issue a one-time extension of 90 days before it would take effect, but only "if the President certifies to Congress that ... a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified" and if there is "evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced."
Since the 90-day extension was never officially put into place, TikTok's future in the United States remains somewhat open-ended, as Trump presumably hammers out the details to keep it alive in the country.
Both Trump and Biden appeared to ping-pong on their opinions about whether the Chinese-owned app should be available in the United States.
Trump was once at the forefront of the fight to ban it.
"As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States," he told reporters in July 2020. "I can do it with an executive order or that."
On Aug. 6, 2020, he signed an executive order seeking to ban TikTok after 45 days. The order faced legal challenges, and TikTok won an injunction against it in late September. When Biden took office four months later, he reversed the order.
Biden also appeared to go back and forth on his stance, putting the onus back on Trump after he offered his signature on the law that ultimately paved the way for the app to be banned.
The idea to ban the app, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, stemmed from concern over how it collected users' data and whether its Chinese owner was a threat to national security.
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