Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- TikTok will not be banned in the US as of tomorrow.
- The White House has once again issued an order granting a 75-day extension on the ban.
- It remains to be seen what company might be interested in buying the service, with Amazon and Walmart both recently mentioned as contenders.
Ostensibly, the United States government wants to ban TikTok. But you would not know this based upon the words and actions of many of the parties involved. For years, fears around nebulous China-based concerns had legislators talking about a possible ban, and back in 2024 they actually agreed on making this happen, setting a clock ticking down to a deadline by which TikTok would need to find a new owner or leave the US. And now, for the second time, that deadline is being extended.
We were originally looking at a January 19 deadline, and after courts failed to intervene in stopping the pending ban, the White House came through at the last minute with a 75-day reprieve, put into effect on January 20. If you were about to pick up your phone and ask Google Assistant “what’s 75 days after January 20,” we’ll save you the trouble — just look at your calendar. It’s tomorrow.
Over the past few days, there’s been lots of talk about possibly savior investors swooping in to purchase control over TikTok away from parent company ByteDance — most notably, Amazon. But with no deal confirmed, the administration has now announced another executive order that will extend the deadline for 75 more days.
While that buys TikTok’s legions of fans a little breathing room, it’s still unclear which investors might still be in the running to save the app. Earlier today, ABC News reported that Walmart could be considering the purchase, but that post has since been taken down.
With this week’s announcement of economy-trashing tariffs already sending the stock market into a nose dive, are companies going to be even more wary of spending the tens of billions of dollars TikTok would cost? The way things are going, it’s starting to feel like these 75-day extensions might as well just continue in perpetuity.
