The past few days have been a wild ride.
TikTok shut down in the U.S. around 10:35 EST on Saturday, January 18th, 2025, as the direct result of a bipartisan bill signed by former President Biden in April 2024. According to the bill, TikTok must sell the company to someone with no ties to China or potential ties to the Chinese government or else it would be shut down in the United States.
The days leading up to the ban were met with immense uncertainty, anxiety, and mourning on the popular social media app. The app hosted nearly 170 million American users and has greatly influenced American pop culture over the past five years. Creators and general users expressed countless videos expressing their outrage in response to what many viewed as government led censorship rooted in misunderstandings, unbridled ambitions for political power, corruption, and fear. People shared compilations of their previous TikTok videos to bid farewell to the communities and audiences they had connected with over the years. I myself posted what I believed to be one final farewell to the app.
The morning after the ban went into effect, I pivoted my content creation methods to adapt to this new reality. CapCut and TikTok had been taking up significant space on my phone, and now, with the apps no longer functional, I deleted them both to make room for new videos, photos, and editing apps. I was flabbergasted just a few hours later to discover that the app was suddenly functional again. I flew to the app store to re-download TikTok, but the app was nowhere to be found. In its place was an error message from the app store saying that due to current U.S. laws, Americans are not able to download TikTok.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I do not have the app as of 8 PM EST on January 20th. I can access TikTok through the TikTok website, but I am unable to see comments, access more than 2 videos on my FYP, share posts, and repost. I am extremely limited in what I am able to do
(This post was originally shared on my News and Updates page on January 20th. As of February 7th, TikTok is still unavailable in the Google Play App and Apple App stores.)
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