Sunday, January 19, millions of Americans went to open TikTok on their phones to find that it was not available for them. They got a message saying that it was unavailable due to the ban. Many were upset about this since they love to scroll through TikTok. However, the good news is that it was not gone for too long. About thirtee hours after it was banned it was started back up. The bad news is it is not over yet as there is still a chance it will get banned later in the future. So, what started all this talk about banning TikTok?
Was it going to be banned in 2020?
The Federal government was worried since TikTok is owned by a Chinese company that the algorithm would give the Chinese company access to US citizens data and give them misinformation about what they see. They thought about banning it to prevent this from happening.
“I see both sides of this. On one hand privacy and data concerns are serious especially for our young generation. On the other hand, Tiktok is a free way to express entertainment to people,” government teacher Morgan Mitchell said.
What happened in April of 2024?
In April of 2024 Congress passed a law that stated a 90 day extension on banning Tiktok. The government, Senators and Legislators all made the law for TikTok to be banned and Former President Joe Biden signed it to be passed. Then there was an interference in court to officially pass the law. The supreme court ruled out they didn’t see any harm in Tiktok to the US citizens.
“I feel like banning TikTok is an infringement on the first amendment,” senior Dakota Parton said.
Will it be banned again?
On January 19 TikTok was shut down and everyone thought it was going to be banned for a long time. Then after about thirteen hours it was back up and running. President Trump signed a document that extended the banning of Tiktok for about 90 days. This was to try and give a US buyer some more time to buy TikTok from ByteDance the Chinese company who owns Tiktok currently.
“I was really sad when it got banned, not for the platform itself but because I had all my data on it,” junior Grace Linville said.
Even though, it is back now for people, there is a possibility Tiktok will get banned again, which will probably upset most users again.
