Apple‘s App Store and the Google Play store have restored TikTok for U.S. users as of Thursday, after they had removed it on Jan. 19.
The tech giants had pulled TikTok because of a federal law effectively banning it as of Jan. 19 because Chinese parent ByteDance had not divested its stake in TikTok. Penalties for violating the law by hosting or distributing TikTok in the U.S. are $5,000 per user, or as much as $850 billion in penalties (given TikTok’s claim it has 170 million U.S. users). As such, both Apple and Google had removed the app.
On Jan. 20, President Trump signed an executive order instructing the U.S. attorney general to abstain for a 75-day period from enforcing the TikTok ban. The order also instructed the AG “to issue a letter to each [TikTok] provider stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct” as of Jan. 19 and through the 75-day extension. According to a Bloomberg report, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent both Apple and Google letters Thursday to that effect.
Reps for TikTok, Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for information.
A now-deleted message on Apple’s support site, posted Feb. 7, explained that TikTok and other ByteDance apps were not available in the U.S. The message said, “Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.”
TikTok, after losing an appeal to the Supreme Court challenging the ban on First Amendment grounds, shut down the app in the U.S. on Jan. 18 ahead of the law’s deadline but the company restored service to U.S. users the next day citing incoming Trump’s pledge to not enforce the ban while he seeks to broker a solution keeping the app legal.
Trump’s arbitrary 75-day pause on the TikTok ban would expire April 5, 2025. It’s not clear that Trump can successfully find a solution that will meet the requirements of the law, passed last year by Congress with strong bipartisan support and signed by President Biden.
Trump has proposed ByteDance and TikTok’s owners give the U.S. government a 50% ownership position in a TikTok joint venture. He’s also suggested that Oracle founder Larry Ellison or tech mogul Elon Musk would be suitable buyers. But ByteDance has not indicated that it’s willing to divest its ownership in TikTok as mandated by the U.S. law. ByteDance has said 60% of its ownership is represented by “global institutional investors” including Blackrock, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group, with 20% owned by its Chinese founders and 20% by employees (including U.S. employees).
