TikTok May Be Back Online, But Its Future in the US Remains Uncertain

President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban TikTok in the United States has been temporarily reprieved, but the app’s future in the country is still far from certain.

While ByteDance was once resistant to the idea of selling TikTok’s US business, that seems to have changed since Trump took office. A ByteDance investor has stated that striking a deal to keep TikTok in the US is “in everybody’s interest.” Officials in China have also suggested they are “open” to a deal, with one official saying that China would not block a deal to keep TikTok in the US if the law provided for it.

This week, a ByteDance executive said that the deal “changes by the hour,” writing on X that “it’s clear to me now that we’re going to have to do a dance between the original owners, the founders of ByteDance itself, and interpreting the law of what Congress and Supreme Court has upheld.”

What’s Next?

So where does all this leave TikTok? For now, the company is in the same limbo it’s been in since it was briefly taken offline in the US. The app is still not available in Apple or Google’s app stores and it could go down again if the company is unable to reach a deal.

For now, though, it seems both the government and ByteDance are much more willing to negotiate than they have been in the past. While these are all the semi-credible plans we know about now, the situation is likely to change over the next few weeks as the various sides attempt to hammer out a viable deal. We’ll keep this post updated as new details emerge.

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