In the end, things are working out great for ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, and Donald Trump, who threatened to ban the app when he was last in the White House.
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Shutting down a popular social media site for a day will invariably lead to a loss of revenue and some users. However, for TikTok, the popular video-sharing app, that is a very small price to pay. Because “going dark,” which it did late Saturday night, allows the Chinese company that owns the app to place Donald Trump in a role he relishes — he gets to be a hero.
And, since he is the very definition of a narcissist, making the incoming president feel good about himself is much more valuable than a few (million) advertising dollars.
Therefore, even though there appeared to be little threat to its US operations, TikTok shut down and left no doubt that there is now only one man who can restore the app.
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now,” ByteDance, the Chinese-owned parent company of the social media site announced.
Well, that does sound like really bad news for its 170 million American users.
But wait, there is more!!!
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” added the company in a message that will undoubtedly be read tens of millions of times.
Fortunate indeed!
In the end, a law that was intended to deal a blow for ByteDance and China will turn out to be a real boon for both.
Great job, everybody!
It’s important to keep in mind how we got here.
US officials believe that TikTok poses a national security risk because of the level of control the Chinese government has over Chinese companies. Their concern was that ByteDance would share any information it harvested from its users or use its algorithm to spread Chinese propaganda.
One of them was then-president Donald J. Trump, who issued an executive order “on addressing the threat posed by TikTok.”
Here is what it said (in part):
Specifically, the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. At this time, action must be taken to address the threat posed by one mobile application in particular, TikTok.
However, the Biden administration felt less strongly about it, and nothing happened.
Then, in 2024, in what was neither a close nor a partisan vote, Congress passed legislation that would require ByteDance to sell its US-based operations to an American company or be shut down.
ByteDance sued but, eventually, the Supreme Court found that law to be constitutional… and here we are.
It seems very likely that Trump will “save” TikTok… in large part because he is popular there, which outweighs the security concerns that led to his executive order from 2020.
On Saturday, the incoming president indicated as much, saying that he would “most likely” grant TikTok a 90-day reprieve to study what he eloquently called a “very big situation.”
There you have it.
After all of this, nothing is going to change, and the man who first wanted to shut down TikTok will now be the one to save it… all because he now has an account with a large following and loves seeing videos of himself.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
