Beata Zawrzel | Nurphoto | Getty Images
TikTok returned to the Apple and Google app stores Thursday evening.
The Chinese-owned social media app had been removed from the the two stores on Jan. 18, moments after TikTok’s leadership temporarily halted service in the U.S. in response to a national security law that went into effect the next day.
Nearly a month later, TikTok is once again available for download in the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Internet service providers like Apple, Google and Oracle could have incurred harsh penalties for violating the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. That law, which former President Joe Biden signed in April required China-based ByteDance to divest its TikTok U.S. operations by Jan. 19 or face an effective ban of the app in the country.
TikTok has argued that the law violates the First Amendment rights of its over 170 million U.S. users, while the U.S. government made the case that ByteDance’s ownership and its alleged ties to the People’s Republic of China make the app a national security risk. The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in January, and, in an opinion, said, “Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”
TikTok pushed back on the Supreme Court’s decision, and followed through with its threat to shut down its U.S. operations unless the Biden administration intervened.
The app came back online after President Donald Trump said he would postpone enforcement of the ban. He signed an executive order on his first day in office to extend the law’s deadline by an additional 75 days to April 5.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” in order to “save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up.”
Despite being removed from the two app stores for nearly a month, TikTok had recovered about 90% of the traffic it was seeing prior to the law’s Jan. 19 deadline, CNBC reported in late January, citing data from Cloudflare Radar.
Watch: We are the only TikTok bidder that meets the SCOTUS’ criteria, says Project Liberty’s Frank McCourt
