Apple, Google restores TikTok weeks after it was banned on national security grounds
Roughly 170 million users in the US are set to jump back online after Apple and Google restored the popular video sharing platform to its app stores.
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TikTok has returned to Apple and Google mobile app stores just weeks after it went dark following the introduction of a US law banning the popular app on national security grounds.
The iPhone maker and search giant restored the TikTok app on Friday following a letter from US Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to a source involved in the matter, the WSJ reported.
The video sharing platform was pulled in the United States in mid-January as a deadline for its Chinese owners ByteDance to sell its US subsidiary to non-Chinese buyers loomed.
US president Donald Trump then promised to issue an executive order delaying the ban to allow time to “make a deal” to keep alive the app, which has roughly 170 million users in the United States.
Trump’s executive order sparked the Justice Department to hand out assurances to companies doing business with TikTok that they wouldn’t face legal consequences while a deal was negotiated.
However legal experts said companies continuing to do business with TikTok could be seen as not complying with the law while they waited for an outcome in negotiations.
The Supreme Court upheld the law banning TikTok before Trump issued his executive order.
The Justice Department, then under Acting Attorney General James McHenry, followed the order’s instructions by sending letters to Apple, Google and Oracle, which provides cloud services to TikTok and could be involved in a deal to give the US control of the app, WSJ reported.
US lawmakers and officials have sounded the alarm for years about supposed risks that TikTok’s ties to China pose to national security, with Congress moving last year to force ByteDance to sell its stake in the app or be cut off from the US market.
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