TikTok was once again available in the Google and Apple app stores on Thursday night.
TakeAway Points:
- TikTok returned to the Apple and Google app stores Thursday evening.
- The Chinese-owned app had been removed from the two stores on Jan. 18 after TikTok’s leadership temporarily halted its service in the U.S. in response to a national security law.
- President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to extend the law’s deadline by an additional 75 days to April 5.
TikTok returns to Apple, Google app stores
Apple and Google removed TikTok from their app stores on Saturday night in accordance with a regulation that mandates China’s ByteDance divest the social media platform or risk an effective ban in the United States.
The Apple App Store and the Google Play store’s removal of TikTok means people in the U.S. can no longer download the popular short-form video app on their devices. The app’s delisting comes after the Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden signed in April. TikTok on Friday said its service would go dark, meaning it would stop working for Americans unless the Biden administration intervened.
Nearly a month later, TikTok is once again available for download in the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Internet service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle could have incurred harsh penalties for violating the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. That law, which former President Joe Biden signed in April, required China-based ByteDance to divest its TikTok U.S. operations by Jan. 19 or face an effective ban of the app in the country.
Contention
TikTok has argued that the law violates the First Amendment rights of its over 170 million U.S. users, while the U.S. government made the case that ByteDance’s ownership and its alleged ties to the People’s Republic of China make the app a national security risk. The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in January and, in an opinion, said, “Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”
TikTok pushed back on the Supreme Court’s decision and followed through with its threat to shut down its U.S. operations unless the Biden administration intervened.
The app came back online after President Donald Trump said he would postpone enforcement of the ban. He signed an executive order on his first day in office to extend the law’s deadline by an additional 75 days to April 5.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” in order to “save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up.”
Despite being removed from the two app stores for nearly a month, TikTok had recovered about 90% of the traffic it was seeing prior to the law’s Jan. 19 deadline, CNBC reported in late January, citing data from Cloudflare Radar.
