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• Mon Mar 31 2025

Could TikTok be banned again and who might buy it?

23 hours ago Share Save Tom Gerken, Liv McMahon & Imran Rahman-Jones Technology reporters Share Save

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President Donald Trump has said a deal to sell TikTok will be made by 5 April, as questions swirl over whether the app will be banned in the United States. The platform 'went dark' for US users in January as a law took effect which banned the app unless it was sold by its parent company ByteDance. But TikTok returned less than a day later following Trump's election win, and he signed an executive order delaying its sale or ban by 75 days. Tech companies, celebrities and investors have since lined up to buy the app.

Has Trump overturned the US TikTok ban?

An executive order is an instruction from the president which has the weight of the law behind it. Trump signed such an order regarding TikTok's sale or ban on 21 January, shortly after his inauguration. But the president's order does not overturn the ban. Instead it tells the US attorney general not to enforce the law for now - something experts had expected would be his first move. That buys time for his administration to, as the order puts it, "determine the appropriate course of action". It allows the president to directly oppose a ruling by the Supreme Court upholding the law to ban TikTok on 17 January. The Supreme Court's ruling said the ban was "designed to prevent China - a designated foreign adversary - from leveraging its control over ByteDance to capture the personal data of US TikTok users".

Getty Images President Donald Trump has said he would "like to see TikTok remain alive".

Could TikTok be banned again in the US?

Trump's extended deadline for TikTok's sale or ban gives ByteDance until 5 April to find a buyer. If no deal is reached the app could once again face a US ban and be pulled from mobile app stores. However, Trump could allow the law to stand but tell the Department of Justice (DoJ) to continue to ignore it. The government would be effectively telling Apple and Google they will not be punished for allowing people to download TikTok onto their devices - meaning the law would remain in place but would essentially be redundant. TikTok returned to Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store in February, after the companies were reportedly told they would not face consequences for hosting it. Trump has also said he would "probably" extend the deadline, if needed.

Who might buy TikTok?

ByteDance has long insisted that TikTok is not for sale, and whether that has changed under Trump's presidency remains unclear. The president told reporters on 30 March there were "a lot of potential buyers" and "tremendous interest" in buying the app. He said earlier in March his administration was talking to four different groups about a potential sale. Trump appears to want to find a compromise that complies with the spirit rather than the letter of law. He has also floated the idea of TikTok being jointly owned - telling reporters he was seeking a 50-50 partnership between "the United States" and ByteDance. Meanwhile, several names have been floated as potential buyers of the company. Trump said he would be open to selling TikTok to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, as well as Elon Musk. Previous names linked with buying TikTok include billionaire Frank McCourt and the Canadian businessman Kevin O'Leary - a celebrity investor on Shark Tank, the US version of Dragon's Den. Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit, said in a post on X in March he had joined Mr McCourt's bid. "The list of people who do not want to buy TikTok is much smaller than the list who do," Mr Musk replied. The biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson - AKA MrBeast - has also claimed he is in the running after a number of investors contacted him following an earlier tweet signalling his interest.

Getty Images MrBeast is the most popular YouTuber in the world with more than 300m subscribers

Companies including Microsoft are even among those involved in discussions to buy TikTok, according to Trump. A US search engine called Perplexity AI has also reportedly offered to merge with TikTok.

What other platforms could TikTok users use instead?

Watch: Can young Americans live without TikTok?