After a 14-hour outage, TikTok has returned to the U.S. The app was taken offline on Saturday night due to a law that banned it unless it separates from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law.
As part of the ban, Google and Apple removed TikTok from their app stores, and web-hosting companies stopped supporting the app. This move followed fears of legal action against companies that didn’t comply, with penalties that could cost billions.
On Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump reversed the black-out with a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. He announced that the law would be paused, and tech companies supporting TikTok would be protected from legal action. This gave web-hosting companies like Oracle and Akamai the confidence to restore TikTok’s website and app.
Despite this, Apple and Google have not yet agreed to reinstate TikTok in their stores. Without their approval, new users cannot download the app, existing users won’t receive updates, and in-app purchases have stopped. TikTok’s future in the U.S. remains uncertain as legal and political issues continue.
