As a brand, the social media platform TikTok has only existed for about seven or eight years.
During that short time, it’s completely taken over the minds of users, business owners, advertisers and, most notably, elected officials. And now, despite generating billions of dollars in annual revenue, it might be on its way out.
How did we get here? And, more importantly, why does it feel like this has been happening forever? The answer likely lies in how rapidly TikTok’s monetization business grew alongside (and possibly in spite of) all those banning efforts.
Beginnings
Ironically, TikTok‘s success was born, phoenix-like, from the shutdown of another app: Musical.ly, which launched in 2014. Within three months, the Shanghai-based lip-sync platform gained over 4.6 million monthly active users, more than Twitter’s Periscope at the time. Within two years, it was already being used in branded promotional campaigns.
Meanwhile, in 2016, ByteDance released its short-form video app for Chinese markets, called Douyin. TikTok, the version intended for international audiences, first popped up in Indonesia a year later and began spreading from there.
Right around that time, ByteDance bought Musical.ly for $1 billion, then consolidated its users and content into TikTok starting in August 2018. Less than six months later, TikTok was already testing ad units, and in 2019 it launched its first beta ad platform to a select group of marketers.
Controversy
Every successful social media platform inspires some hand-wringing – but TikTok started facing intense scrutiny pretty much right out of the gate.
In February 2019, the FTC slapped TikTok with a $5.7 million dollar fine, then the largest civil penalty in a children’s privacy case, for illegally collecting personal information from children while still operating as Musical.ly.
That same year, several countries took turns temporarily banning the app for reasons related to pornography and child safety. India would eventually make its ban permanent in 2020, not long after a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese troops exacerbated already tense relations between the two countries.
They weren’t the only ones with military concerns. In December 2019, the Pentagon advised against downloading TikTok on government-issued phones, causing the US Army and Navy to enact official bans on the grounds that the app posed a security threat.
But it wasn’t until after India’s overnight ban on June 29, 2020, that the US government suggested blocking the app for civilians, too.
The Trump Administration
At this point, things got a bit messy.
On July 7, 2020 – the day before TikTok finally announced its first self-serve ad platform for businesses – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that a potential ban was “something we’re looking at.” President Trump confirmed as much in an interview soon after, saying he wanted to retaliate against China for its perceived role in the COVID-19 pandemic.
On August 6, the White House released an executive order ordering a ban on US transactions and new downloads of TikTok, to begin within the following 45 days. Eight days later, he followed up with another executive order that gave ByteDance 90 days to divest itself of all TikTok-related assets – possibly to Microsoft, which had already made an offer.
But on September 20, Trump postponed the ban at the last minute, giving tentative approval for a joint sale to Oracle and Walmart. A week later, execution was once again stayed at the eleventh hour when US District Judge Carl Nichols granted TikTok a partial injunction.
What followed next was a series of back-and-forths, as the Trump Administration half-heartedly appealed and other federal judges followed suit, until banning efforts all but collapsed in December.
In the meantime, TikTok would have plenty of breathing room to expand its ad targeting capabilities and go after media budgets.
The Biden Administration
Although President Biden had previously expressed his own concerns about TikTok during his campaign, he attempted to close the loop by reversing Trump’s executive order with one of his own in June 2021.
But the peace was not to last. (And it probably didn’t help that BuzzFeed News found evidence of China-based ByteDance employees accessing data from US customers in 2022, either.)
Starting in December 2022, all kinds of legislative attempts at restricting TikTok began making their way through Congress; one, the straightforwardly named No TikTok on Government Devices Act, was actually signed into law that same year.
In 2023, Montana became the first state to pass legislation that banned TikTok from app stores and all personal devices, not just government-issued ones – although US District Judge Donald Molloy blocked the ban before it went into effect on January 1, 2024.
All the while, TikTok was making a name for itself in the ecommerce and advertising industries. Brands were back on the app in a big way; so were shoppers, thanks to trends like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt. By 2023, TikTok’s US business was valued at $40 to $50 billion, while parent company ByteDance was valued at $220 billion.
But finally came The Big One: the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which prohibits the distribution of apps from countries “designated as foreign adversaries,” meaning TikTok and all other ByteDance-owned apps. After passing through the House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support, the bill landed on President Joe Biden’s desk on April 24 and was unceremoniously signed into law.
Trump 2.0
Since then, TikTok’s had a Sword of Damocles hanging over it like a video you can’t scroll past.
Despite rumors about a possible sale to Elon Musk, ByteDance did not express any desire to divest prior to Trump’s inauguration. The Friday before, federal judges and the Supreme Court upheld the law as written, and the White House confirmed that it would not enforce the ban on Biden’s way out.
Then, on Saturday night, the ban seemingly went into effect – for a little while. But after just a few hours offline, the TikTok app and site began showing this message to users on Sunday: “Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
Note that at the time this message was first posted, Trump had not actually been sworn in yet.
Since returning to the presidency on Monday, Trump has signed an executive order extending the deadline another 75 days. But Trump also told reporters that “TikTok is worthless” unless he agrees to whatever divestiture deal ByteDance makes, and that he believes the US is entitled to half the company. (Guess President Trump didn’t like the inauguration party TikTok sponsored for him on Sunday night)
In the meantime, TikTok and other ByteDance apps can’t be downloaded from either the Apple or Google app stores. Plus, TikTok throwing its support behind Trump likely means we’ll see an exodus of some remaining users, not unlike recent defections from Facebook, Instagram, Threads and X.
So what’s next? Who knows. All anyone’s been able to do for the past few months is speculate and prepare for the worst.
As a silver lining, at least those are two things Ad Tech Land knows how to do pretty well.
Update 1/21/2025: This article has been updated to include new developments stemming from Trump’s inauguration on Monday, January 20.
