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As TikTok stares down an impending federal ban, Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election could be a lifeline.
It’s a plot twist for the embattled, Chinese-owned social media company. During Trump’s last presidency, the president-elect had been the one to initiate the calls to ban TikTok, which only petered out because he didn’t win his first attempt at re-election in 2020. But during his 2024 campaign, Trump took a different approach. He wrote in all-caps on his platform Truth Social, “For all of those that want to save Tik Tok in America, vote Trump!”
President Biden signed off on a bill in April that gives ByteDance, the Chinese parent company to TikTok, nine months to sell the platform. If ByteDance fails to complete a sale — which is a likely outcome — it will be banned on January 19, 2025, the day before Trump’s inauguration. However, ByteDance has the option of pursuing a 90-day extension, which would put the ball in Trump’s court.
Trump’s reasoning for his support of a TikTok ban in 2020 echoes the current bipartisan sentiment among legislators who pushed for this legislation. At the time, Trump raised concerns about the Chinese Communist Party potentially gaining access to Americans’ data (while there has not been public evidence of the CCP accessing American TikTok users’ data, there has been proof that ByteDance accessed TikTok user data). Now, the president-elect appears more concerned with how a TikTok ban would benefit Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.
“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” Trump told CNBC in March.
He made similar comments on Truth Social, claiming that he doesn’t want a TikTok ban to result in Meta’s business growth, because he believes Facebook is “a true enemy of the people.”
Another reason for Trump’s changed view on TikTok could be his relationship with Jeff Yass, a billionaire GOP donor and co-founder of the trading firm Susquehanna International Group. Yass and his wife, Janine, donated over $96 million to right-leaning PACs during this election cycle — and Yass also happens to own 7% of ByteDance.
Though Trump’s win might also be a victory for TikTok, politicians’ campaign promises don’t always come to fruition.
Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos.
Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to (929) 593-0227. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch.com.
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