For embattled Tiktok, Trump offers hope of a reprieve

As United States President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, TikTok could be in line for a reprieve from the very leader who led the charge to ban the embattled video-sharing platform.

Under a law signed by US President Joe Biden in April, ByteDance, the Chinese owner of the wildly popular app, was given nine months to divest its stake in the company or face a ban on national security grounds.

The deadline for the sale – January 19 – is the day before Trump’s inauguration.

On the campaign trail, Trump, who signed an executive order seeking to ban the app during his first term, pledged to “save TikTok” but neither he nor his transition team have disclosed further details about what this might mean for ByteDance.

The president-elect potentially has several options, although he would not be able to overturn the law enforcing the ban on his own, according to legal experts.

Originally passed in the US House of Representatives as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a shorter version of the ban was tacked onto a Senate bill approving foreign aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.

Shortly after it was signed into law, ByteDance initiated a lawsuit arguing that the ban violates the freedom of speech of 170 million American users of the app.

“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide,” the company said in the lawsuit.

ByteDance did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The lawsuit is expected to take years to conclude and is further complicated by the fact that a ban would involve the participation of Google and Apple, which offer TikTok in their app stores, and Oracle, which hosts the app in the US.

Anupam Chander, an expert on global tech regulations at Georgetown Law in Washington, DC, said that Trump could ask the US Congress to empower him to negotiate a different arrangement with ByteDance and TikTok that takes security concerns into account.

“I think many politicians would prefer that TikTok not go dark in the US in January. After all, some 170 million Americans continue to use the app, even after the government told them it’s a national security threat,” Chander told Al Jazeera.

“And yes, even if TikTok stops working for a while because TikTok’s owners won’t sell at a fire sale price, Trump could convince Congress to change the law to bring it back.”

David Greene, the civil liberties director of the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said Trump could also instruct the US Justice Department to drop or modify its defence in the lawsuit with ByteDance or instruct the US Department of Commerce not to enforce the law.

The incoming president could also choose to do nothing and let the ban stand, Greene said.

“There’s a fair chance he still doesn’t stick to his offhand comment that ‘I’m going to reverse the TikTok ban’ because he tends to change his mind about these things or he gets talked into changing his mind,” Greene told Al Jazeera.

“You may recall he was the one who issued the initial TikTok ban. He did it by executive order [in 2020], which was overturned by the courts, but he was very much of the belief that TikTok posed a national security threat,” he added.

The EFF was one of dozens of civil liberties and freedom of speech organisations that opposed a ban on TikTok, arguing that it posed no greater threat than other social media platforms.

Critics of the TikTok ban also say that rather than targeting a single social media company, the US needs laws protecting data privacy similar to those passed by the European Union.

Much of the concern around TikTok has focused on its Chinese ownership and fears that Beijing could use the app to harvest data on millions of Americans or find a secret back door into their devices.

Proponents of a ban also argue that Beijing could use the platform to carry out influence campaigns aimed at subverting US democracy.

US-based apps, however, are also capable of harvesting massive amounts of user data, which they can in turn sell to data brokers and then on to intelligence agencies and other buyers.

ByteDance attempted to mollify US lawmakers with its $1.5bn “Project Texas” initiative, which created a dedicated US subsidiary to manage American data on US soil with the assistance of US tech company Oracle.

Despite the concession, many US officials remain suspicious of the app and its Chinese ownership amid a growing bipartisan consensus that Beijing poses a threat.

TikTok has already been banned or otherwise restricted in numerous countries, including Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Somalia, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Restrictions also exist in the US for government employees and at agencies in individual US states.

Despite the threat of a US ban, the sale of TikTok had seemed unlikely to many observers from the start because it would mean giving away access to the app’s secret – and some argue, addicting – algorithm.

It is also unclear whether Beijing would allow such a sale to go ahead.