Quick overview

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TikTok swings on the edge of a potential US ban. U.S. officials have instructed parent firm ByteDance to reach a deal by June 19 to sell the short-video platform or face the consequences, leaving 170 million American users uncertain about its future.

 

President Trump hinted he might grant a third extension on the sale deadline, and the app briefly disappeared from U.S. phones. He later pushed the cutoff to April while negotiations dragged on.

Trump then signed a second order that extended the deadline one more time, but it expires on Thursday. He could extend it again, yet serious doubts remain about how many times he can continue postponing the decision before ByteDance must sell or bid farewell to TikTok.

According to Trump, TikTok is a bulwark against Meta’s (META) dominance on social media, a position he changed during the 2024 election after initially calling for its ban during his first term. Trump’s relationship with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has been fraught. After the January incident, the CEO removed Trump from his platforms.

Trump later threatened to jail Zuckerberg following the Capitol attack in January. A lawsuit Trump filed over the suspension was settled in January, with Meta agreeing to pay $25 million. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was invited to Trump’s inauguration alongside other tech executives, such as Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Google CEO Tim Cook. Trump has also credited TikTok with drawing young voters to his reelection campaign.

The law banning TikTok was first passed by Congress and signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2024. This law mandates that ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, divest its stake in the social media platform. If it fails to do so, there will be severe penalties for U.S. app stores and cloud providers that continue to host the service. However, the Trump administration has assured cloud and app store companies that they will not face penalties during the extended deadline