Will TikTok have a second life?

TikTok is hoping that 2025 can be its year – but what comes next for the social media company is truly anyone’s guess. Will someone buy it? Will it divest from its Chinese ownership? Will it exist in America next week (the app is fully banned in China as is)? Stay tuned.

The social-media app is seeking yet another revival at the 11th hour. Despite a bipartisan bill signed by President Joe Biden that restricts the ability for foreign adversaries to run social-media companies in the United States, TikTok is activating its army of supporters once more (the app is presumably hoping that its child soldiers will not threaten to kill themselves or lawmakers this time)… and it just might work.

The problem facing the company and its parent company, ByteDance, is that the bill gave a deadline of 19 January – the day before the presidential inauguration – for TikTok to rid itself of ByteDance’s ownership; ByteDance is a ‘cog in China’s vast military machinery’, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies noted.

But it might also fail. Today, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that ‘the challenged provisions do not violate the petitioners’ First Amendment rights’; the 9-0 nature of this decision might squash some of the rumored TikTok rallies that are potentially popping up around the inauguration.

TikTok, unsurprisingly, isn’t giving up without a massive and expensive fight. It joined the legion of other massive tech companies in donating to Trump’s inauguration, and its CEO will sit near Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos during the festivities. 

The platform’s unique algorithm is what makes it immensely useful to both its users and, ostensibly, to the Chinese Community party. ‘TikTok has made it so easy for regular people to become “content creators” and make money off social media and be connected with brands so much better than apps like Instagram that we’re willing to sacrifice our data over it’, one user told The Spectator.

Should TikTok vanish this weekend, prepare for a mental-health crisis. ‘Kill me’,  another user told The Spectator if the app is gone.