The Daily - The TikTok Flip-Flop

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Over the past few weeks, users of the video app TikTok braced themselves for a national ban to take effect.This weekend, the app went dark. But less than 24 hours later, it came back. And it credited President-elect Donald J. Trump with flicking the switch.Sapna Maheshwari, who covers TikTok for The Times, discusses the biggest social media ban in American history — and whether the incoming president can actually stop it.Guests: Sapna Maheshwari, a reporter covering TikTok, technology and emerging media companies for The New York Times.Background reading: TikTok flickered back to life after Mr. Trump said he would stall a ban.What we know about the TikTok ban.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Well, this might actually be it. My last ever TikTok video. It has been fun here. From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is the Daily. Well, guys, this might be the end of an era. Over the past few weeks, users of the popular video app TikTok braced themselves I made so many friends and memories on here. I'm gonna miss you guys so much. And I'm really gonna miss it. And I'm really gonna miss you. for a national ban to take effect. Oh, it's actually going! What the f***? I've had this since I was like 10!

This weekend, it did, and the app went dark. Say bye. Hopefully we have a miracle and we get to keep Jake dark, but it's not looking good for us. But less than 24 hours later, it came back, crediting Donald Trump with flicking the switch. Thank you, soon to be President Trump.

I know I'm happy to be back. I'm sure a lot of you guys are as well. I love you guys and I will see you in the next one. Today, my colleague, Sapna Maheshwari, on the biggest social media ban in American history and whether Trump can actually stop it. Tiktok! Tiktok! Tiktok! Yes! Yes! Yes! It's Monday, January 20th. Sapna, welcome back to The Daily. Thanks for having me.

So we're talking on Sunday afternoon and this morning, millions of Americans woke up to find that TikTok, the video platform with 170 million users, was no longer working. The U.S. government ban that's been talked about for months was finally here. But then, as we were preparing to tape this episode with you, the app went back online. You are a TikTok expert. Help us understand what's going on here. So, yes, there was a huge deal last night when TikTok went dark.

It stopped working for people. Nobody knew what was happening. And you saw people posting tearful goodbye videos at first, then you couldn't see anything. You saw the app store just start changing as people started rushing to this new Chinese app called Red Note. You saw people posting to Instagram, on Instagram Reels, on Blue Sky, just turning to everywhere they could

to share how stunned and shocked they were. Essentially fleeing the app because they could no longer post there. Yeah, exactly. It was like digital refugees just trying to figure out where do we go to post now that this app that we use so much is suddenly gone. But then 12 hours, that's how long this lasted. Do you know how stressed I've been? Around 12, 30 PM today, the app came back. But yeah, if you haven't heard, we're back now.

Um, just ignore the last week of everything I've been saying. And people have been freaking out. They're really excited. And mind you, I slept through it. But the situation is really fluid. We don't know what's going to happen. We're talking early afternoon Sunday, and when I wake up tomorrow, I really don't know what the situation will be. Okay, so let's talk about how we got here. And I'll remind listeners that TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is a Chinese company. It had tried to fight the ban all the way to the Supreme Court.

Tell us what happened. Right. So last year, Congress passed this law saying that TikTok had to be sold by ByteDance, their owner, to a non-Chinese company. And this law offered this deadline to make sure that ByteDance and TikTok did it. Said it has to be sold by January 19th or some sort of talks have to be underway or the company will face a ban in the United States. And what was the thinking behind making it sell the company? So for years, lawmakers have had

these national security concerns around TikTok. They're kind of in two camps. One they've said that US user data could be handed over to the Chinese government based on laws that apply to companies in China. The other piece of it is lawmakers have said that there's a chance that TikTok could spread Chinese propaganda to millions of Americans without their knowledge. And the governments had these concerns for years dating back to at least 2020.

And this is the first time they really passed a law that was going to do something about it. And the company, as I remember from your telling, actually objected on the basis of free speech. That free speech meant that it should be allowed to continue operating. But on Friday, as you're saying, the Supreme Court actually decided against the company and upheld the ban, which of course brings us to a situation we found ourselves in this morning.

That's right. TikTok said from when this legislation was first introduced that they would beat it, that it was unconstitutional, that it violated the free speech rights of TikTok users in America, and they gambled all the way to the Supreme Court. And astoundingly, the Supreme Court decided on Friday, unanimously, that the government had the right to implement this law and to ban TikTok if it didn't sell. And so what happened after the court made that decision?

The court comes out with this decision on Friday, January 17th. This law is supposed to go into effect two days later on January 19th. So Saturday night, users of TikTok start seeing this pop-up message appear. And it says that specifically we are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution. So TikTok is saying that Trump is going to fix their situation, which is kind of confusing because Trump was against TikTok in his first administration. That's right. This is a complete turnaround from how Trump felt about TikTok in 2020.

We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things or a couple of options. So if you rewind your memories back then, Trump was very anti-TikTok. And here's the deal. I don't mind if, whether it's Microsoft or somebody else, a big company, a secure company, very American company buy it.

And he said that it needed to be owned by American companies and he tried to ban it. It can't be controlled for security reasons by China. Too big, too invasive. And he brought up the same national security concerns that we've heard from lawmakers recently. They were really focused on the data. He said Beijing could find a way to get US user data from TikTok,

and that was unacceptable. So he wrote this executive order trying to ban the company, but it actually didn't hold up in federal courts. They said essentially he didn't have the authority to ban TikTok at the time. But this idea never went away. And his efforts actually gave rise to this law several years later that we're looking at now that basically demands this sale or ban of TikTok.

Okay, so Trump actually inspired the law we're talking about today. That's right. So this law was inspired by Trump, and the company was really caught flat-footed. It had been hearing talk of a ban for years years and it had thought it was in pretty good shape heading into the new year. They had fought back a sort of ban effort the year before.

President Biden joined TikTok around the time of the Super Bowl. But then this law passes and the company scrambles. It's trying to figure out how to protect its huge operation in the US, its thousands of employees. The US is its biggestS. It's thousands of employees. The U.S. is its biggest market. And they think of Trump. They think of him as someone who, despite his efforts in 2020, might actually be willing to go to bat for the company this time.

But why is that, though? I mean, Trump, again, we've said, was the original naysayer on TikTok. Right. So Trump had seemed to kind of change his tune on TikTok. He'd spent a lot of time in the past bashing one of the company's big competitors, which is Metta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. And clearly, President Biden was willing to sign this law and the company was thinking, you know, maybe you should try its luck with a new Republican nominee. So they decide to go after Trump. How do they woo him?

So the big player here is this conservative billionaire donor named Jeff Yass. He's a big Republican and it turns out he owns about 15% of ByteDance shares. So he has this big stake in the future of TikTok. And we know that he had talks with Donald Trump at some point in March of last year. Around that time, Trump goes on CNBC and he's got a different message about TikTok. I could have banned TikTok. I had it banned just about I could have gotten it done. But I said, you know what, but

he's saying, you know, yes, I'm aware of the security risks, but it shouldn't be banned. The thing I don't like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger. And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people. And, you know, maybe there's another solution. And I don't want Facebook's business to really benefit from the loss of TikTok. Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. And it's this really big change from what we'd seen in the past. Okay. So this was the moment of Trump's full conversion to TikTok.

Yeah. And it leads to kind of the summer of Trump on TikTok, as I thought of it. The president is now on TikTok. on TikTok, as I thought of it. The president is now on TikTok. It's my honor. He joins TikTok itself and becomes this huge hit in about June of last year. No tax on kids, by the way, no tax on kids. It was a total sensation.

He got three million followers in a single day. POV. 100 days left before President Trump delivers another knockout. It goes way past Biden, who's the nominee at the time. We're nation in decline. Nobody is safe. Absolutely nobody. We're going to be a strong nation again.

And a bunch of his family members join TikTok. And it feels like there's this turn on TikTok where conservatives see this as an invitation for them to join TikTok and to start making accounts and posting there. You got to get out and vote. We want to save our country. We're the only one going to save it. That other group of people, they're going to destroy our country.

We can't let that happen. Go out and vote for Trump. So fast forward to November, Trump wins. TikTok looks pretty smart in all of this wooing. And now here we are on the eve of Trump's inauguration and everything's really up in the air with the app. If we're looking at the letter of the law, what are Trump's options here?

So legally there's not a lot of options. This law was designed to get ByteDance and TikTok to sell. And they basically had nine months to get this done or to start talks and it seems like there's nothing on the horizon. But there is a part of this law, a sort of magic button, a piece of the law that says that he can push all of this out by 90 days if Congress approves, as long as there's a qualified buyer. I mean, basically someone who's willing to buy the company and real talks are

underway. And so there's a chance that maybe this could push out the ban and keep it from ever happening. But of course, that requires a buyer. We'll be right back. So, Trump says he's going to be TikTok's savior. He's going to kind of negotiate a deal. What do we know about prospective buyers? So, TikTok's big problem for selling this whole past year has been this big question, which is what exactly is for sale?

And let me explain that a little more. So basically, TikTok's algorithm is what makes it what it is. And that's the technology that fuels the videos that people see when they open the app. The magic of seeing something that is suddenly so funny or just totally suited to your interests, the TikTok-iness of the app is the algorithm. And it's really unclear if that's for sale. And that's because TikTok's been saying for the better part of a year that it can't sell largely because it's not quite sure that China would allow it to. And that's because in 2020, China put out this list of technology that

can't be exported without the government's permission and it seems like the TikTok algorithm is a part of that list. So given all of that, has anyone actually shown up to buy it? So despite this for sale sign on TikTok from last year, there hasn't been a whole lot of activity but some names have been floated. There's been speculation that Elon Musk who who bought Twitter, might have the money to buy it. And then there's this billionaire named Frank McCourt, who used to own the Dodgers. And he said he's interested in buying TikTok too. He's teamed up with people like Mr. Wonderful of

Shark Tank. And he said that he wants to buy TikTok without the algorithm. And what does that mean? Basically, he thinks he'll be able to buy it and find a way to recreate sort of the engine behind it. But he really wants to get access to the users and he's offered a pretty low price for it, about $20 billion. A lot of people have found that to be

maybe not the most serious offer for what TikTok could really be worth, which some analysts have said, around $100 billion or more. Wow. So the algorithm is critical to the value of the company and we still at this point don't know whether China is willing to let go of it.

That's right. It's been the huge question mark hanging over this from the very beginning. And there has been a lot of signaling happening. And this is where it's gotten really interesting. The CEO of TikTok, Xiu Qu, has said he wants to figure something out. And Trump posted something last week, the same day of the Supreme Court ruling, where he said he'd just gotten off the phone with President Xi Jinping from China, saying that they had a long discussion and TikTok was on the list of things that

they want to solve together. We're also seeing that Trump has developed a little bit of a relationship with the CEO of TikTok. He's invited him to the inauguration and the Chinese vice president is also attending the inauguration. So now what is that? What is Trump doing there? I mean, inviting the CEO of TikTok to attend his inauguration.

I mean, it seems to be a clear sign of support for TikTok from the public statements that Trump has been making in the past week. He wants to be seen as the savior of TikTok, the person behind bringing this app to Americans and giving them something that brings them joy from day one of his presidency. giving them something that brings them joy from day one of his presidency. Okay, so both sides here are really signaling that they want a deal, Trump and China. But each side seems to have a different vision of what a potential fix through that deal would be, right? Like for China, presumably a deal might be okay if it didn't include the algorithm. That's right. And I mean, it really raises the question of what else could be involved in these negotiations.

I mean, up until now, the positions have been pretty clear. No export of the algorithm, otherwise no TikTok in the US. And so what kinds of elements could be brought into this negotiation, into this discussion to get TikTok running in the US again? We really don't know. Does Trump have any other tools in his toolbox? There's so many legal questions around what he could actually do.

I mean, just to remind you, this is a law passed by Congress, signed by the president and now upheld by every justice on the Supreme Court. So this is going to be a little bit of a pressure test of the US government in the coming days. And Trump has been posting online even today about a sale, but it's really unclear what the specifics might be and whether it would actually comply with the law. Trump has said that he could issue an executive order that basically delays the federal ban while he tries to negotiate some sort of a deal.

Experts I've spoken with aren't even sure if that holds up legally. Already you're seeing some dissent among senators in Congress who feel that Apple, Google, tech companies should be helping to uphold this ban. So ultimately, I mean, this was done by design. The lawmakers who wrote this law wanted something bulletproof. They wanted something that couldn't be wiggled out of. And they wrote a law that they believed really served those ends. And now we're going to see, you know, how can this actually stand up if the president has decided he may not like this law? So, Sapna, what's the future of this?

Because on the one hand, you have Trump about to take office and, you know, he's preparing to bring a bunch of tariffs, it seems like, down on China's head. On the other hand, you have Trump talking about saving an app that the whole US establishment from Congress to the Supreme Court has determined is a threat to our national security. So how's Trump going to thread the needle on this? I mean, the future of this app is still so up in the air. Just in the time that we've been talking, TikTok that's now offering a pop-up message that's thanking Trump for saving the app.

Oh my goodness. So that's new from when we started recording. Literally, in the time that we've been talking. And we really just don't know what's going to happen this week. And this does feel like quintessential Trump. Welcome back to the Trump administration. He is the rare politician that can kind of hold a contradiction like this. Look what he did in 2020. Look what he's doing now. For so many TikTok users, they don't care about the China of it all.

They want the app back. The last 12 hours have been really hard for a lot of them, and they're hoping that it doesn't go away again. But it also raises this other big question, which is, if TikTok does go away, what does that mean for the future of the US and China relationship? Two countries that rely on each other so much. It's incredible to think that this app, which up until now has been known for dances and recipes and fun and entertainment, may also be remembered as a real turning point in an increasingly fraught relationship between the US and China.

Sapna, thank you. Thank you. I hope the news doesn't keep going for you. I hope you have some of your Sunday. I'm not counting on it. And as of today, TikTok is back. On Sunday evening, Trump took credit for the ban being lifted in a speech in Washington, D.C.

Can you believe what I'll do to win an election? And we went on TikTok. In the speech, he bragged about his popularity on the app and suggested that the saga was now settled. So I liked it. I like it. I had a slightly good experience, wouldn't you say? We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas took effect on Sunday. As part of it, three Israeli women were released from captivity in Gaza and reunited with family members in Israel, the first hostages to be released as part of the first stage of the deal.

The hostages were seen being handed over from the Red Cross to Israeli troops. They then had emotional reunions with their families at an Israeli hospital. The start of the initial phase of the deal was delayed by almost three hours to 11.15 a.m. local time after Israel said it had not formally received the names of the first three hostages to be released. The corresponding release of 90 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and minors, took place after midnight on Monday in the West Bank. In Gaza, Palestinians honked car horns and blasted music to celebrate and began returning

to their homes all across the enclave. Today's episode was produced by Eric Krupke, Diana Nguyen, Michael Simon Johnson, and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Brendan Klingenberg and Mark George, with help from Maria Byrne, contains original music by Alicia Baitup, Rowan Nimisto, and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsvark of Wonderly. Special thanks to Aaron Boxerman. That's it for the daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernoussi.

See you tomorrow. 1