TikTok, Trump and the pendulum’s tick tock

In 2014, a social media entity called Musical.ly was launched which dealt with short lip-sync videos. While that doesn’t seem much and most haven’t even heard of it, it had a brilliant algorithm which recommended the next video in a manner that users binge-watched it on a regular basis. The Chinese company ByteDance realized the value of that algorithm and took over Musical.ly. While ByteDance’s Douyin benefited greatly from the algorithm, it was released in international markets as TikTok. The rest was history.

In 2020, TikTok was seeing tremendous growth and its traffic in certain metrics overtook even the giant Google Search and YouTube. When it was a bit shy of the 1 billion user mark; a lot of analysts predicted it would ultimately overtake Facebook. Then disaster struck. The two largest democracies in the world targeted TikTok. While India banned it outright, the story in America has turned to be one real never-ending saga. 

TikTok US timeline

2019: Parent company ByteDance was fined to the tune of $5.7 million by the FTC over charges of collecting the data of minors, leading to the launch of a TikTok Kids Only mode.

2020: This is the time when TikTok came under the radar of the then President Donald Trump. Trump wanted to ban it outright with a rider saying that it could be saved if TikTok US was taken over by an American entity.

2021: TikTok received a reprieve when Trump lost the election. The incoming Joe Biden administration revoked the ban but ordered an enquiry into it on the grounds of national security. The issue of content moderation and data privacy came up later in the year. 

2022: Texas looked into TikTok with serious allegations of human trafficking and child privacy. TikTok settled for more than $1 million in a class action suit involving the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The FCC asked Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores over data concerns. TikTok was also accused of keylogging. Towards the end of the year TikTok was banned on federal devices. TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas was grilled in the US Senate. 

2023: ByteDance finally accepted that key data of US users was stored in Chinese servers. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was grilled by the US Congress.

2024: In election year, Biden echoed Trump in demanding that TikTok US be sold to an American entity. This move was backed by federal courts and reached the door of the Supreme Court. 

2025: While there were talks of Mr Beast and Elon Musk buying TikTok US, it was Perplexity AI which made an official bid. January 19 was the final date for the sale of TikTok US following which it would be banned. The Supreme Court upheld the ban and TikTok downed operations with the following message for its users:
“Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”

Trump took over and in one of his first decisions granted a 75-day reprieve to TikTok. That and they can go in for a 50-50 partnership. China could agree to this. When asked by a reporter post-inauguration why he had a change of heart, he replied, “Because I got to use it.” His TikTok channel gained great popularity during the elections, though Indians still cannot view the handle.

The fortunes of TikTok have been swinging like a pendulum and they always seem to be in a race against time. The last chapter is yet to be written.

Interestingly despite all this, the TikTok search engine overtook Google Search to be the world’s most popular in 2024. Expect a lot of ups and downs in this battle too.