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Today I watched some videos. Some were nonsense conspiracies. Others were videos of Sonic the Hedgehog singing in chinese. Riley from Inside Out fan edits, and trad wifes harvesting eggs. I saw someone cosplaying former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin. I saw another try to sell me 99 cent sweatshirts. Oh, what a beautiful place, and how close we were to losing it all.

TikTok was born in September of 2016 to parent company ByteDance, and during its young life of over eight years it saw over 3 billion users. It was a beloved app to say the least. Many forget how long the battle to keep her alive has been. 

“I, Donald J Trump, President of the United States of America, find that additional steps must be taken to deal with the national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology” the decree said “at this time, action must be taken to address the threat posed by one mobile application in particular, TikTok.”

This was August of 2020. A bygone era, but one I remember well. It was this “Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok” that started the war against her. A battle to kill TikTok. 

Trump had given TikTok a date and told its parent company ByteDance to find a US owner for the app, or to be prepared to be booted out of the country. But then the election comes, and with it, a new administration. 

On January 20th of 2021, on his first day in office, Joe Biden reversed the order and asked for further investigation to be done. 

June 2022- a new revelation was made. All data collected on US users were being sent and stored to China. Congress was in fear, and acted quickly. A bipartisan movement was started to kill TikTok. Now it wasn’t just about a petty fight- it was about safety and security. A date was set yet again- sell TikTok by January 19th, 2025, or the app gets the boot. 

“They realize that I was right,” Trump said on social media. However, he would only hold this opinion for a little bit longer. It was in a meeting with Republican donor Jeff Yass that changed Trump’s tune towards TikTok. It also so happens that Jeff Yass owned a “significant stake” in ByteDance, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. 

Then came the day of mourning, or more like 14 hours of confusion. TikTok seemed to come back as before it even fully went away. “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!” the app read  when users opened the app on Sunday the 19th.

A political move- that’s what the TikTok ban was. Trump took away something, blamed Biden, and brought back TikTok as if that was his goal all along. On Trump’s inauguration day, Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, was in attendance alongside Elon Musk owner of X (formally Twitter), and Mark Zuckerberg owner of both Facebook and Instagram. Almost all the heads of all major social media in the US were in line behind Trump, an oligarchy behind the president who at the wave of a hand can save a billion dollar company that is illegally harvesting American data.

Today I watched some videos. Some were nonsense conspiracies. Others were conservative talking heads. Some pledge mass deportation and a reckoning against Democrats. All were a sign of a new age of social media. Facebook automatically followed Trump and JD Vance. Twitter purged liberal talking points. On TikTok I was fed nothing but pro Trump videos. TikTok may not be officially dead, but the TikTok I know most certainly is, and let us not forget who killed her.  

By Cash Navarro