BELLINGHAM — After shutting down its platform in the U.S. for a few hours with a nationwide ban about to kick in, TikTok is back.
The ban, which was rooted in concerns that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, could be forced to hand over sensitive data on users to the Chinese government due to the country’s national security laws, sparked confusion among the app’s over 150 million U.S. users.
The ban also happened to take effect on Jan. 19, the day before the presidential inauguration. Just hours after entering office, incoming president Donald Trump announced his intentions to sign an executive order delaying the ban.
With the platform back up and running, here’s what it means for Washingtonians.
TikTok is back, for now
The executive order, which was signed on Jan. 20, delays the ban by 75 days. As a result, the app will remain up and running through early April. Between now and then, the new administration says it will work to address the concerns that led to the ban “in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.”
If that doesn’t happen, the ban would presumably kick in again, although that’s not a guarantee. ByteDance could opt to sell its U.S. operations to a company not based in a country the U.S. considers a security risk, which would allow the app to keep running even under the law that instituted the ban. Another delay of the ban is also a possibility.
- What about WA lawsuit against TikTok?
The ban isn’t TikTok’s only legal issue. Separately, the social media platform is being sued by over a dozen states, including Washington. The lawsuits revolve around a different issue — the company allegedly misled the public about its safety for minors and the measures it takes to protect its young users.
Washington’s complaint claims that the app is intentionally addictive and has adversely affected the mental health of its users, contributing to teen mental health struggles across the country.
“TikTok has contributed to the crisis by targeting kids to get them hooked and ensure a lifetime of revenue, designing its Platform with elements that prey upon young people’s unique psychological vulnerabilities and drive young people to spend excessive amounts of time on TikTok’s Platform,” the lawsuit alleges.
Among the state’s main complaints are that TikTok uses an age screening method that’s easy to bypass: you simply have to enter your date of birth. In reality, the lawsuit claims, this does little to protect young users from some of the app’s potentially harmful features, but allows the company to advertise it as kid-friendly.
The company responded to the suit by saying that it has a team working to remove suspected underage users, that the accounts of users under the age of 16 are given additional privacy settings by default and that it’s recently introduced screen time limits to protect its users from addiction.
Washington’s lawsuit is still in its early stages, having just been filed in October, 2024. But should the state prove its claims, it still wouldn’t lead to a ban of the app in the Evergreen State. The state is seeking an injunction forcing TikTok to stop the practices in question, along with a fine of $7,500 for each violation and an additional $5,000 for violations that targeted a specific demographic.
According to Washington’s then-Attorney General Bob Ferguson, now the state’s governor, the goal of the lawsuit is to compel TikTok to change its supposedly harmful practices.
“Platforms like TikTok must be reformed and we know they are unwilling to do so on their own,” Ferguson stated in the news release announcing the lawsuit.
- Washington residents losing interest in TikTok ban?
While an analysis of Google search data by software company Apryse found that Washington was looking up questions related to the TikTok ban more than any other state in the days leading up to it, the state doesn’t appear as interested in the app’s return.
In a second study, Apryse looked at search data since the announcement that the ban would be delayed. It found that Washington was searching for terms related to the app’s return, such as “TikTok working again,” at the seventh lowest rate of any state in the country. Several of the states that joined Washington near the bottom of the rankings were the ones searching about the ban most in the days leading up to it, suggesting that people who use the app didn’t need to look up whether or not it was working.
Google trends data suggests that Washington searches for “TikTok” and “TikTok ban” spiked on Jan. 19, after a steady rise throughout the month, before returning to more normal levels in recent days.