Less than 24 hours after TikTok was taken out of the US airspace, the very popular social media channel is back online following Trump’s announcement during a pre-inaugural event on Sunday.
“As of Today, TikTok is back”! The incoming president said with outstretched arms on the eve before he officially assumed his leadership role, as MAGA fans gave out a massive cheer.
Trump noted that he also used TikTok during his campaign. He said that the aspect of publicity, which he seemingly did not imagine he could do, was managed by a 21-year-old youngster. He also noted that the very majority of TikTok users were young people – and they beat the Democrats in the game of getting votes from the lower age bracket.
“We won the youth votes by 36 points – so I like TikTok”! He exclaimed (Video below).
TikTok started restoring its services shortly after the announcement. We are “back in the U.S”, the Chinese owned app wrote, thanking Trump for allowing its service which is used by over 170 million people and 7 million businesses in America to be alive.
However, Trump’s announcement is not final for TikTok and comes with some conditions. As announced on Truth Social, he only gave the Chinese owners time (90 days grace) from today to become a joint venture in which the United States will have a 50% ownership stake.
While Trump is being lauded as TikTok’s savior, he too wanted to ban the social media channel when he was in office in 2020 with the same claim that it was leaking personal info of Americans to China.
In fact, he signed an executive order that gave TikTok’s owner ByteDance to sell off but later re-structured it to a partnership that would have had Oracle and Walmart as co-owners.
Trump’s latest “saving of TikTok” can also endear the company and many of its millions of users to become his fans.
With tech billionaire Elon Musk and X (Twitter) solidly behind him, and other major tech and social media giants paying homage, the new President is sure to have a loud voice.
So far, Facebook & Instagram owner Mark Zuckerberg visited Trump in his home and changed the policies of his network on fact-checking to allow for better free speech. The money roll call is also open with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Uber, and Google donating $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural fund.
So far, Trump’s inaugural fund has received $170m in donations, raising concern on transparency. As Bruce Freed, the president and co-founder of the Center for Political Accountability said, “The donations to the inaugural fund are basically to gain favor and to gain access”.
