New York City, Jan. 20 ’25 (NYPost/TNZ): Policy experts told The Post that TikTok’s decision to shut the app down for barely 12 hours appeared to be a PR stunt meant to stoke a public outcry.
The shutdown was to restore access to the China-owned app on Sunday after President-elect Donald Trump chimed.
“TikTok’s early shutdown either came down to corporate incompetence. Or, it is a deliberate PR stunt to encourage a manufactured sense of panic,” said Joel Thayer.
Thayer is a DC-based tech lawyer and president of the Digital Progress Institute. “Given it’s waffling, I assume it’s the latter.”
The popular video-sharing app pulled the plug for all US users, late Saturday night, but began restoring service Sunday afternoon.
The restoration came after Trump vowed to “save” TikTok through an executive order on Monday that would delay enforcement of the divestiture law requiring parent company ByteDance to sell its stake.
The company thanked Trump “for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties”.
However, the Biden administration had already said it would not enforce the law. Trump previously signalled ahead of the shutdown that he was against the ban and would “most likely” issue the executive order.
Thayer said the company’s leadership has acted as “an unsympathetic and disingenuous broker” in its dealings with Congress and the public over the last several years.
“The truth is that, even before Congress enacted the law, the US has told TikTok how to fix its blatant national security concerns for over five years and the company did nothing,” Thayer added.
“Now, after it attempted to bring bogus First Amendment claims to delay the law’s enforcement and on the eve of its ban, it wants a pity party.”
Under the divestiture law, app store operators like Google and Apple face penalties of $5,000 per user if they allow new downloads of the Bytedance-owned app after the Jan. 19 deadline.
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Service providers like Oracle and Akamai also faced lesser liability for supporting the app’s operation.
As written, the law did not require TikTok to go dark for people who had already downloaded it on their phones, nor did it ban Americans from accessing the app.
A TikTok representative declined further comment and pointed to the company’s earlier statement.
Searches for TikTok yielded no results in Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store as of 2.45 pm ET.
This was a sign that the US tech giants still weren’t willing to risk massive penalties outlined in the law, even after Trump’s statement.
Google declined to comment on the situation. A message in Apple’s App Store said the company was “obligated to follow laws in the jurisdictions where it operates”.
Oracle and Akamai representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“This may be a game for TikTok. But it isn’t a game for Apple and Google,” said Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “They need to comply with the law, regardless of TikTok’s shenanigans.”
Trump said he would “like the United States to have a 50 per cent ownership position in a joint venture”.
“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up [sic],” Trump said. “Without US approval, there is no TikTok.”
TikTok said it would “work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States”. (NYPost)
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