TikTok - banned and un-banned in 14 hours

I don’t think anyone missed the fact that the United States - 4 ½ years after the then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proposed banning TikTok (and Trump then reinforcing the idea) - finally enacted the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, effectively banning TikTok nationwide due to national security concerns.

In response, TikTok temporarily suspended its services in the U.S. on the 19th of January this year.
Let’s summarize and pinpoint what might be important for us marketers to know.

U.S. TikTok users were welcomed back to the app, a mere 14 hours after the ban was reinforced.

One could say that the ban caused a certain level of mayhem on the app.

TikTok creators across the nation spent the days leading up to the ban creating TikToks giving their final farewells, promoting their other socials and, in some cases, even going as far as creating accounts on the Chinese equivalent of TikTok - Xiaohongshu (also called RedNote).

14 hours after the services were suspended, U.S. users could open the app and be greeted with a message stating that the services were back up and running again. Now, there has been some conspiracy theories circling around regarding what actually happened during those 14 hours, but we’re not going to deep dive into that today, so essentially this is all you need to know for right now:

• President Donald Trump has signed an executive order delaying the ban's enforcement by 75 days, allowing time for negotiations and potential resolutions. Following this intervention, TikTok began restoring its services to U.S. users.

• The app is functioning as per usual - although some U.S. users have experienced a level of censorship regarding certain political posts. This censorship does not seem to concern users outside of the U.S. and one could speculate whether or not this is part of a negotiated deal with the President. 

• Businesses considering creating accounts on Xiaohongshu in fear of losing parts of their TikTok audiences to the Chinese social network should probably sit tight, as the ban’s delay is most likely to be prolonged.

Are your target audiences located in the EU? Don’t worry, the app works just fine and will work just fine for non U.S users.