TikTok, a social media site where you can create, share and discover short videos, experienced a short and brief ban on January 19th. The ban, being only 14 hours, confused many Amercians causing them to have questions. Alongside TikTok, many other apps, also owned by ByteDance, are also being banned. Those apps consist of CapCut and Lemon8.
“I was just scrolling on TikTok when it first got banned. I was so confused at first because it hasn’t been the 19th yet. I went to bed and woke up to it being unbanned. I was still confused because I thought that it had been officially banned,” freshman Gigi Howard said.
TikTok thanking Donald Trump was their final closing message before the app was banned for a short amount of time. Although Trump didn’t exactly save the app, currently there is an extension that will be assessed. As of January 27th, Trump and TikTok are trying to strike a 50/50 ownership deal with the United States. Many people have speculated that META, the owners of Facebook and Instagram, are trying to buy TikTok due to the app now being linked to users’ Facebook accounts.
“How do they [the people responsible for the TikTok ban] sleep at night knowing that they are part of the reason, maybe most of the reason, that thousands of people across this country are losing their jobs. Main source of income, gone,” Michael DiConstanzo, a popular TikTok influencer, explained in one of his TikToks about the ban.
While the ban is causing a lot of stress among influencers and users of the app, there is a lot of questioning about where everyone will go after TikTok is banned. There was much talk about switching over to other popular social media apps such as Instagram or Youtube, but there is another alternative. Many people have suggested using Rednote. Rednote, also known as Xiaohongshu, is a Chinese app that is often compared to TikTok. It has some of the same properties as TikTok, such as having short-form videos and a live-streaming feature. However, since it is a Chinese owned app, it will most likely be banned alongside TikTok. Since the initial TikTok ban on January 19th, it has become the number one app on the AppStore.
“It might be good for influencers or people who make a living off TikTok to switch over to Rednote. I do think it’s funny that it was the number one on the AppStore,” freshman Presley Abbot said.
The ban date has been pushed back. While TikTok is still available for people who have the app, it’s no longer available on the app store. This means that people who had deleted the app, or simply never had it all, can no longer get the app. It’s been stated that TikTok will not be returning to the app store. It’s all up to ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, to either sell the website to a U.S. based buyer, or the Trump administration to pass a new law to veto the old one.
