TikTok, a popular social media platform used primarily for the creation, sharing and discovery of short-form videos, has been up for grabs in the United States since politicians passed a law in 2024 that would ban the app in the country unless the app was sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
The United States attempted to have the app removed from app stores due to concerns of ByteDance’s links to the Chinese Government. United States officials and lawmakers believed that this connection to the Chinese government would threaten national security. The government feared that Beijing would thereby force ByteDance to hand over data on TikTok users in the United States to the Chinese government.
This would include information on approximately 120 to 170 million people in the United States, depending on the source and the specific metrics used to count, such as monthly active users versus ad reach. Research conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2024 found that 33% of U.S. adults use TikTok.
In ByteDance’s Privacy Policy, they explicitly state that they do not sell any information collected from the website. However, there are some limited circumstances in which they may share the categories of data they collect for legitimate business purposes, such as with service providers, within their corporate group, in connection with a sale, merger, other business transfer, or for legal purposes.
In April 2024, former President Joe Biden gave ByteDance nine months to find a United States-approved buyer for the app, otherwise TikTok would be shut down in the United States following the passage and signing into law of a bill by Congress.
After the bill was signed into law, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, stated, “We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts. The facts, and the Constitution are on our side…rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere.”
After Donald Trump took office in January 2025, he extended the deadline to allow for the search of a potential buyer for the app, which was secured in September 2025.
In September 2025, Trump signed an executive order approving a proposal to purchase TikTok. Potential buyers of the platform were named to be Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz. You may be wondering, who are these people?
Oracle is a United States multinational technology company that provides a wide range of cloud applications, infrastructure and AI services. Oracle is one of the world’s largest software and hardware companies.
Silver Lake is a private equity firm that is focused on technology and technology-enabled investments. Silver Lake has invested in many major companies, such as EA, Airbnb and Dell.
Andreessen Horowitz is a private venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups and growth companies in various sectors, including healthcare, consumer and fintech.
Trump signed an executive order in September 2025 extending ByteDance’s deadline to divest its U.S. operations in response to these companies’ interest in purchasing TikTok’s U.S. operations. After Trump issued this order, the Department of Justice would not be able to enforce the national security law to ban the app in the U.S. until Dec. 16.
So yes, we will have access to TikTok at the very least until Dec. 16. Scroll to your heart’s content, Lions!
