TikTok has been thrown a lifeline by President Trump who signed an executive order on Monday that delays the banning of the popular app by two and a half months.
The ByteDance-owned video-sharing app has gone through quite a bit over the last week as millions of users began posting videos to the platform saying their goodbyes to viewers in preparation for TikTok's ban scheduled to take place on January 19. The ban came after a 270-day process where its owners, ByteDance, were given the ultimatum to sell the app to a US government-verified entity or have it removed from both app marketplaces and banned from Internet Service Provider (ISP) across the US.
A deal wasn't struck, and as a result, TikTok went dark for approximately 16 hours but quickly became available again a day before Trump was sworn into his Presidency as the former and now current president indicated he was going to sign an executive order extending the enforcement of the ban. That executive order has now been signed by Trump, which gives ByteDance an additional 75 days to reach a deal with the US government. Trump suggested the US could own 50% of TikTok, which would enable the US government to take a look under the hood of the app and monitor it for nefarious activity.
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