President Donald Trump signed an executive orderMonday promising to pause enforcement of a law banning TikTok from the U.S. for 75 days.
The executive order instructs the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to refrain from enforcing the law banning TikTok and from penalizing online service providers for keeping the app available to Americans during the 75-day period.
Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, or H.R. 7521, went into effect Sunday. It requires online service providers to refrain from making TikTok available or performing maintenance to keep the app running in the U.S., with the exception of “a qualified divestiture,” meaning the Chinese company ByteDance must sell TikTok for the app to be legally available in the U.S.
TikTok went dark in the U.S. on Saturday, with service providers Google and Apple terminating their services as the ban went into effect. However, American users’ inability to access the app was short-lived.
Trump announced Sunday he would issue an executive order to extend the time before H.R. 7521 would be enforced and not hold companies liable for keeping the app available. TikTok became available to users shortly after the announcement but has not yet been restored to Apple or Google’s app stores.
H.R. 7521 was introduced March 5, 2024, due to concerns about the national security threat posed by TikTok and other ByteDance applications due to a Chinese law allowing its government to request and receive data from its companies.
Ohio University associate professor of history Joshua Hill specializes in research about U.S.-China relations and says there are two broad areas of concern.
“One is that through a person’s usage patterns on TikTok and through other information about your phone that TikTok gathers, personal identifiable information about your life can be gathered,” Hill said. “The other thing which came up in congressional debates about the bill is that through manipulation of (the) algorithm topics that the (People’s Republic of China, or PRC) government would like to promote are more likely to come up in somebody’s TikTok feed and topics that the PRC government doesn’t want to promote are less likely to come up.”
Former President Joe Biden signed H.R. 7521 into law in April 2024, but not without detractors.
In a Supreme Court case, TikTok argued banning an international social platform violates the free speech of app users. TikTok has also consistently stated China does not have access to American data and argues H.R. 7521 is based on conjecture rather than actual threat. Regardless, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld H.R. 7521 Jan. 17.
Grace Cobb, a senior studying virtual reality and game development, expressed sadness about a potential ban. Cobb has used TikTok since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, finding community with users who are interested in art.
Cobb also expressed concern for her future in game development.
"A lot of the game companies are owned by Chinese companies and the bill extends toward that,” Cobb said.
Cobb said she is nervous about “the amount of censorship that could happen due to this.”
Although H.R 7521 is explicitly directed at TikTok and ByteDance-owned companies, the bill leaves room for defining a foreign adversary-controlled application, creating the potential for other companies to fall into the category.
“A covered company that is controlled by a foreign adversary; and that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States,” the bill reads.
Cobbs believes using social media comes with risk regardless of Chinese ownership, noting data leaks happen frequently and exposure to propaganda is likely not exclusive to Chinese-owned applications.
“Using social media, no matter what the platform is, you have to be aware of the possibility of quote-unquote indoctrination … even if a foreign company were to put their policies and propaganda toward you, you have to be aware no matter what you use,” Cobb said.
The future of TikTok in the U.S. remains uncertain. If Trump can force a sale, it will likely be without TikTok’s infamous algorithm, as China has recently put algorithms on a list of goods that it will not export.
“If TikTok is being sold, what exactly is being sold, and what do you value?” Hill said. “Is it the user data? Is the user data valuable without the algorithm?”
