With over a billion users around the world, Tik Tok is the perfect platform for the latest trends, limitless creativity, and a place for people to make their voices heard. But what if the whole app suddenly disappeared one night? Tik Tok, a widely popular social media app, recently faced the threat of being banned which sparked intense debates and differing opinions. Launching in 2017, Tik Tok is a short-video platform that quickly gained global popularity due to its algorithm of viral trends, challenges, and entertaining content. However, its roots trace back to 2014 when it was originally launched as Musical.ly. In 2017, the app was acquired by the Chinese-based company ByteDance, which rebranded it as TikTok. Since then, Tik Tok has grown into one of the most influential social media apps worldwide.
So now that we know more about TikTok, why was it getting banned? Tik Tok was getting prohibited across the nation due to its parent company being based in Beijing. The United States is claiming that ByteDance has access to American data and is sharing it with the Chinese government. Based on these claims the US government worries that the algorithm could be manipulated to put out content meant to shape and change American opinions. They also worry about the national security threat it poses if the Chinese government is harvesting data from American users. TikTok, however, claims that the government has yet to prove that a security threat like this has ever happened. They argue that this ban violates the First Amendment rights, as well as restricting the voices of millions of Americans. A law was passed in Congress in April of 2024 and was signed by President Joe Biden. This law ordered that Bytedance had to divest from TikTok within 9 months and find a US-approved buyer otherwise they would be shut down. This means Bytedance would have to sell TikTok to an American based company and take all its money out of Tik Tok. The US Supreme Court will hear arguments about the fate of Tikor this weekend on January 17th.
On January 18th at 10:20 P.M. when people across the U.S. went on TikTok, they were greeted with a notification stating: “Important update from TikTok”, this update informed users that they “regret that a U.S. law banning Tik Tok will take effect on January 19th and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable.” TikTok then went on to give hope, by sending out another message that they are currently “working to restore our services soon in the U.S. as soon as possible”. This notification could be dismissed; however, a couple minutes later at 10:30pm when Americans tried to access TikTok, yet another notification popped up: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now”, along with a note saying that however they were “fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate Tik Tok once he has taken office”.
We wanted to find out how our school community felt about this situation. We first turned to our American Government teacher to get his take on how things played out. First we wanted to know did he really think Tik Tok was going to get banned on January 19th? He responded with “No, Because I always felt that there would be some deal behind closed doors that would keep it going” We decided to investigate further by asking if he thinks the push for banning Tik Tok addresses valid concerns about privacy and security? He stated: “I don’t know because the national security issues they talk about they can’t share with the public; now there’s a potential that the US government would be involved.” He went on to say, “I’m more scared about the US government having my data than the Chinese government.” Finally we asked him what his thoughts were on how things played out on the 19th and he responded, “I feel duped like this was all part of a master plan.” He continued “I think it was confirmed for me when the CEO of TikTok had a front-row seat to Trump’s inauguration.” He deleted Tik Tok immediately after it came back due to feeling duped. Mr. Krieger always had an inkling that TikTok wouldn’t be banned but he never thought this is how things would have played out. We decided to continue our research to see if others at Ipswich High feel the same.
We wanted to get a strong Tik Tok user’s opinions and views on the situation, so we interviewed TikTok user Jack Sabino who is a senior at IHS. He said, “I do not think its right, because Tik Tok connects people. We need free speech in America, and the government can’t limit that, and that’s why I’d like to thank Trump for trying to save Tik Tok”. When we asked how this would change how he spends his free time, he explained that it would make him a lot more productive because he won’t be on his phone as much.
TikTok has definitely been in everyone’s topic of conversation due to all the controversy that followed it. The banning of TikTok played out very unexpectedly and throughout this article we wanted to explore the different viewpoints from content creators to avid users and explore those effects in our community. Despite Tik Tok being back in the U.S. and coming back to the App Store, the effects of the ban still linger among users, leaving Tik Tok with almost an eerie feeling now.
