After punting this ball down the field enough times to go from a field in Washington DC to a street in Beijing, the US and China have finally agreed upon the “framework” for deal for the Chinese firm ByteDance to sell TikTok’s American operations to a US-owned company, as reported by the BBC.
That means, supposedly, that TikTok can continue operating in the US without being held in a legal limbo of constant, back-to-back-to-back deadline extensions. Let me walk you back through the drama that began late last year.
tiktok’s rollercoaster year
The US officially banned TikTok from operating in the US at 10:30 p.m. EST on January 18, after the US Supreme Court upheld a December 6, 2024 judgment by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which affirmed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
America always has such inventively named acts. This one legalized concerns about the national security risks posed by TikTok’s Chinese ownership.
The app became glitchy for those who tried to access it, and if you opened it, you got a pop-up message that read, “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.
TikTok disappeared from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play app store for Android, and other apps owned by ByteDance also went offline in the U.S., including CapCut, a video-editing app, and Lemon8, another social media app.
Then a day later, the ban was lifted temporarily. What followed was a series of 75-day extensions and last-minute reprieves. Always there was the bellicose threat that if ByteDance didn’t find an American buyer for TikTok, it wouldn’t receive another reprieve.
Details on the deal supposedly struck on September 15, according to the BBC, are scarce at the moment. The latest “temporary” reprieve from TikTok’s ban is set to expire on September 17, so I’d imagine we’ll hear more details officially from the two governments soon.
Or, you know, maybe not. Maybe the White House will just grant another extension. We’ve been down this road three times this year already. Why not a fourth?
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