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Tiktok was back up and running on Sunday, hours after President-elect Donald Trump vowed to prevent it from “getting dark. “
The Chinese social media app showed it was in the process of restoring service in a post on X and praised Trump for his role in restoring the site.
“We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive,” TikTok Policy wrote on X.
“This is a strong pro-First Amendment stance and opposes arbitrary censorship. The paintings with President Trump in a long-term solution that helps keep Tiktok in the United States,” he said.
In a “welcome back!” Message that appears in the post-ban application, users were also informed: “Thank you for your patience and your support. Following President Trump’s efforts, Tiktok is back in the United States!””
Tiktok’s delighted users went to other social media sites to share the percentage they had recovered in their accounts.
They included New Yorkers who rejoiced in the news, while expressing surprise that the ban ended so quickly.
“It’s fast!” says a user walking through Central Park.
Emma, 19 college student visiting from South Carolina, said, “I was so excited when I saw that it was for the short amount of time that it was gone.
“I kept clicking on the application because I lost it a lot,” he said with a smile. “I hope it doesn’t disappear again. “
The news came here hours after Trump said he would issue an executive order on Monday to “prevent Tiktok from going extinct. ” In pronouncing his goal of saving the app, Trump, 78, said the U. S. would take a 50% stake in a joint venture to buy the platform.
It is not transparent if Trump meant that he was looking for the United States government to be the owner of the application in part.
Tiktok’s parent company, Bytedance, in the past had nine months, until Jan. 19, to sell the platform’s U. S. operations or be banned from the country.
The ban had been overwhelmingly passed by both chambers of Congress in April and subsequently signed into law by President Biden.
But Trump, who initially supported the ban in 2020, said on Sunday that he hoped to give the app a 90-day extension to find a non-Chinese owner, prompting the company to come back online without fear of retaliation.
TikTok, which claims to have a user base of more than 170 million in the United States alone, has long raised national security concerns, adding China to a trove of American data.
Despite Trump’s change of heart on the app, some Republicans and tech moguls have strongly opposed restoring it as is, posing continued dangers to U. S. national security.
“Until Tiktok is no longer controlled by Beijing, the national security risk that motivated the divestment law will not be addressed,” Evan Swarztrauber, a senior fellow at the American Foundation for Innovation on Sunday, told The Post.
Other tech experts slammed the app for creating a “manufactured sense of panic” by pulling the plug on its US operations before even the day was out, only to quickly restore them again.
“Tiktok’s early shutdown is due to company incompetence or a planned announcement meant to encourage a sense of realized panic,” said Joel Thayer, a technology attorney in Washington and the President of the Digital Progress Institute. “As it is in relief, I think it is the last solution.
“The fact is, even before Congress promoted the law, the U. S. told Tiktok how to solve its blatant national security upheavals for more than five years, and the company did nothing,” Thayer said. “Now, after looking for false claims to sustain enforcement and the day before its ban, she is a disgrace. I’m sorry, though, the corporate is frankly a hostile and trap broker. ” »
U. S. Senator Tom Cotton also expressed concern after the app would return for millions of Americans.
“Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs. Think about it,” Cotton wrote on X.
While TikTok was up and running again for millions of Americans, the app remained unavailable for new customers to download at the App Store.
Earlier news of the app being shut down for good sent some American users into a tizzy trying to access it through a VPN, or virtual private network, which can trick websites and apps into thinking a user is based in a different country.
VPNs were unable to help Americans access their accounts late Saturday and into Sunday while the short-lived ban was still in effect.
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