The TikTok Ban will go down as the most trivial and illogical ban of the 21st century. Not only did it last less than 24 hours, but also in the around 14 hours that it was banned, multiple users figured out ways to get past the ban. This article is dedicated to the facts of what happened from the 17th to the 20th with the end goal of figuring out what actually happened during the outage.

The Supreme Court Hearing

On January 17th 2025 a hearing happened in The Supreme Court where the US upheld the law which would ban TikTok. This was met with out roar as users claimed that this was a violation of their First Amendment rights. At this hearing, the ban was to be set in effect on the 19th, the day before the inauguration of Trump. After this, the Biden administration further stated that the implementation of this law must fall to the Trump administration. 

The Blackout

January 18th 2025 would be the day that TikTok decided to take precautionary measures for the ban. At around 10:30pm EST, a screen popped up for all users stating that a ban has been enacted, which resulted in nobody being able to use this app. Alongside TikTok, Bytedance’s other apps (Lemon8 and CapCut) also stated a similar message. Quickly, some users decided to find ways to get around the ban. The main way people were preparing was surprisingly thought of. Even if you used a VPN, the app would not work because it was downloaded from a US app store and was using a US account. The only way to see content was to use a VPN on a signed-out TikTok website, and even then there were some problems.

The Aftermath

Early on the 19th, TikTok was unbanned “thanks to the efforts of President Trump” which seems a bit like a fake-out. Alongside this, all other ByteDance apps are restored. That being said, all ByteDance apps are unavailable for download at the moment. There is currently no word about if the app will return to app stores or not. The only thing we know is that ByteDance has around 90 days until something will happen again.