They were following the law. Anything else is just promises by people who are not exactly known for following through with them
Shutting down because the law says it, and to prevent really big penalties, is not making “a big political statement
As far as we know, Tiktok is operated on US servers by Oracle. While it might have been possible to find another cloud provider and move all US data there, I can see them not wanting to do that given that there was no point if the app isn't distributed in the US anymore.
It was a gambit used for net neutrality in 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Slowdown_Day
Nico argued TikTok made the minimum change required by law.
They were telling users who to blame and who to thank because in this specific case, the blame and the thank are pretty clear. The Biden administration approved the ban, and the Trump administration reversed it. Blaming one and thanking the other is also hardly surprising.
There is no question that TikTok is a politically sensitive app and the US/China are very nearly in the funnel to a major war so a lot of the usual niceties are questionable. Previously the US has attempted something that looked a lot like a black-bag kidnapping of a Chinese industrialist [0]. I'd imagine that the TikTok people are acutely sensitive towards how the law is actually going to be interpreted and enforced in practice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA...
Jan 17: Biden administration says it will leave TikTok ban enforcement for Trump [1]
Early Jan 18: Trump says he will 'most likely' give TikTok a 90-day extension to avoid a ban [2]
Late Jan 18: TikTok makes app unavailable for U.S. users ahead of ban [3]
Midday Jan 19: TikTok begins restoring service for U.S. users after Trump comments [4]
They already knew what was going to happen. They also changed the message shortly after disabling it from "We're working to restore service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned." to "We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Stay tuned!" [5]
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-administrat...
[2] https://nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-likely-give-...
[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-makes-app-unav...
[4] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-says-restoring...
[5] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/tiktok-sends-notice-to-users...
(The latter part is probably because Tiktok's banning was not particulaly divisive within the population as it is in the US.)
Tiktok had a better algorithm (to get hooked) but Instagram eventually caught up (with algo)..
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/oracle-prepares-start-shu...
From (2)(a)(1):
> (A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.
>
> (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
Possession of and providing non-distribution ( / maintenance / update) services to a "Foreign Adversary Controlled Application" are not in any way a part of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act". Operative services are specifically and intentionally excluded from the list, to ease the burden of enforcement.
If not, what is your basis for your conclusion?
It's like betting on jury nullification but without the benefit of double jeopardy protection. It's unclear if any of the US companies the law is aimed at will risk it.
I think you mean "campaign promise."
No legally significant action has been taken between now and yesterday.
That doesn't mean TikTok would be able to continue operating, but it could mean the parties involved wouldn't have to suffer penalties for their operation up to that point (past the ban date). But maybe it wouldn't work, and a judge/jury would throw the book at them. We just don't know until and unless it goes to court.
If you're arguing that qualified immunity would enable Trump to break the contract if he so chose without consequence, then that is probably true, but I see no reason that would imperil the companies having a rock solid defense against enforcement penalties in the interim period.
Companies => Agree to temporarily facilitate the operation of TikTok until matters are further clarified.
I don't see anything particularly controversial here.
The courts on the other hand can permanently block laws.
This is the internet.
TikTok I think was going for more of a shock factor. Maybe even without talking to Trump they have credited him as restoring it, might seem weird for him to “go back on it”.
Or maybe it’s to put him in good light.
For example, why would the President have a veto power if he can simply post-facto ignore laws they pass?
No, SCOTUS ruled that the President is not subject to criminal prosecution.
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On many, many occasions, the courts have ruled executive actions invalid.
On no occasion, have courts assigned criminal liability to a President.
SCOTUS explicitly affirmed that as the rule.
My comment was just re "SCOTUS also affirmed that"
As to upholding laws passed by Congress--just two days ago, Biden did his last round of student debt forgiveness, bringing the total up to $188 billion.
I’m not trying to “both sides” this. I’m just saying that the standard you’ve articulated for how promptly the president needs to act on a law like this isn't the standard we apply in practice. The government tries to reach deals like this in lieu of enforcement actions all the time.
They even have broad immunity while conducting official acts up to and including breaking the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)
“Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), is a landmark decision[1][2] of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court determined that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's "official acts" – with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive presidential authority that Congress cannot regulate[1][2] such as the pardon, command of the military, execution of laws, or control of the executive branch.”
You could obviously create a far more functional system but it would probably be far less stable. The reason you have all these checks and balances, from top to bottom, is that the Founding Fathers were obsessed about the risks imposed by both a tyranny of the majority and a tyranny of the minority. And non-enforcement of something effectively comes down just a continuation of the status quo, making it difficult for any group to [openly at least] impose their will on others.
Similarly, one of the reasons the president has a pardon power is because he doesn't have to enforce those federal offenses. E.g. imagine that a president without pardon power instead offers "plea deals"/settlements for a $1 fine or concocts vacuously lenient house arrest enforcement.
The original constitution basically accepts that there is very little you can make a president do, and it instead formalizes what would otherwise be a gray area (it does have plenty about what he can't do). Some of this has changed over time especially as the judicial branch has granted itself more power.
Presidents can’t just ignore a law categorically (although they regularly do, e.g. DACA, DOMA, etc.) On the other hand, presidents can certainly decide not to prosecute a particular entity under a particular law. That’s the heart of the executive power versus the legislative power.
Here, Congress wrote an extremely specific law that applies basically to one company. Which isn’t impermissible. But it’s also not clear to me that Congress can insist on immediate enforcement of that law without crossing effectively usurping the executive power and directing the President to prosecute a specific company at a specific time.
no, the president can pardon individuals convicted of a criminal law, which is not at all what you describe here
So, pardons can very much apply before conviction or even prosecution. They may not pardon someone for something that hasn’t happened, but as long as there in office when the crime is committed that’s more a technical issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdick_v._United_States
After President Gerald Ford left the White House in 1977, close friends said that the President privately justified his pardon of Richard Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of the Burdick decision, which stated that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and that acceptance carries a confession of guilt.[6] Ford made reference to the Burdick decision in his post-pardon written statement furnished to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives on October 17, 1974.[7] However, the reference related only to the portion of Burdick that supported the proposition that the Constitution does not limit the pardon power to cases of convicted offenders or even indicted offenders.[7][8]
Is this really the case? Has this specific situation ever been ruled on by the Supreme Court? Burdick v. U.S. doesn't address "pre-pardons" or blanket pardons. Nixon was never prosecuted or tried.
The court ruled they could reject a pardon given before prosecution thus avoiding the need to testify about someone else. It would be a moot point if the pardon was invalid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdick_v._United_States
But that's not the relevant part of Burdock for this thread.
The relevant part is that an (accepted!) pardon does apply before indictment.
I understand that there was this law. It's a political statement because of the political message being sent out to the user base. The act of shutting down on its own is not a political statement.
It requires Apple and Google to stop distributing the app on their app stores, and it requires any US-based hosting providers that host TikTok services to stop providing those services.
ByteDance could shut down any US-hosted services and serve from outside the US, and be entirely compliant with the law. The TikTok mobile app might become out of date and stop working (for people who already had it installed on their phones), but www.tiktok.com would continue to work just fine.
And they were forced to use those hosting providers (oracle) by the US. It's not like investing loads to bring all the data over to singapore or so would serve them well either. They'd still lose the US business relatively quickly and with lower chances of turning things around like they might've. Why bother?
The option you describe is another among the several options available.
Unless you're saying that the service shutdown would not have brought Bytedance into legal compliance, which would be a novel assertion.
This was a political gift to Trump, as the messaging in TikTok's app makes perfectly clear.
* Trump gets a free layup to look like the hero for unbanning it
* Trump will think hard and heavy in the future about banning it again, knowing there's a lot of passionate young people that will reconsider voting for him next election if he does
Seems like a smart move to me.
Plus has there ever been a US president that came back after a term away? Usually when a "new" president comes in you figure they'll be running again next time.
If it's not that, it may well be as the original commenter in this thread suggested a stunt to make a point.