American TikTok enthusiasts are relieved to hope the ‘magic’ will return when the app returns Reuters
Author: Doyinsola Oladipo
NEW YORK (Reuters) – On Saturday night, for the first time in five years, millions of U.S. TikTok users who signed up for late-night scrolling were met with an unsolicited notification that their beloved app had been banned and shut down.
Their exile lasted less than 24 hours, ending when the Chinese-owned company restored service on Sunday after President-elect Donald Trump, who returns to power on Monday, said he would revive access to the US. But the TikTok masses have already begun to think about life without the app that has captured nearly half of all Americans.
As users returned, some cringed at sweet goodbyes posted before the shutdown or thanked Trump on social network X, while others wondered if the world of TikTok would ever be the same again.
“We’re back, but at what cost?” mused one user on the platform.
Trump’s rescue of ByteDance-owned TikTok represents a reversal from his first term. In 2020, he intended to ban the short video app over concerns that the company could share Americans’ personal information with the Chinese government.
More recently, Trump said he has a “warm place in his heart for TikTok,” crediting the app with helping him win over young voters in the 2024 election.
TikTok stopped working for US users late Saturday before a law shutting it down on national security grounds went into effect on Sunday.
Trump said he would “extend the period before the legal bans go into effect so we can make a deal to protect our national security.”
“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in the joint venture,” he wrote on his platform Truth Social.
DO NOT OVERCOME
Although relieved, some users wonder if such a change in the company’s ownership structure would ultimately change the TikTok experience.
“I remember when Elon bought Twitter and how dramatically it changed the overall feel and way people interacted on the app. That worries me a lot,” Kelly Sites, 38, said of billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media site. the place now known as X.
“I don’t want the magic of the algorithm to change,” said Sites, a freelance content creator based in Kansas City, Kansas.
The algorithms that TikTok relies on for its operations are considered critical to ByteDance’s overall business, making a sale of the algorithm-based app highly unlikely, Reuters reported in April.
While questions are being raised about the future of TikTok, some users – especially those who make a living from it – lament that their trust in the government will never be the same.
“I think it’s a very sad period in history,” said Richard “Chuck” Fasulo, 37, a mechanic and auto influencer from Duchess County, New York.
Fasulo told Reuters the app helped him get out of debt, more than double his income and take his family on vacation for the first time last summer. Facing the specter of losing the business opportunities the app provided him was not a pleasant experience.
“I think I, like many others, have developed a lot of disdain for the American government,” said Fasulo, who has about 400,000 followers.
For others, however, relief is most important, regardless of its source.
“I would choose a political gimmick over losing TikTok forever,” Charlotte Warren, 31, a dating and dating content creator based in Austin, Texas, told Reuters. Without TikTok, she said she could lose up to $60,000 in annual revenue, more than 200,000 followers, and is unsure whether she will continue to post content on other platforms.
“I just wanted my app back.”
