When a possible TikTok ban for users in the US loomed at the beginning of the year, many influencers and TikTok creators posted tearful farewell videos, nostalgic retrospectives, and confessions of cheating. The popular social media app was offline in the US for 12 hours before it was accessible again.
This time, there was almost no trace of any great farewell mood, even though the next deadline over a possible US ban was just around the corner.
The US government demanded that TikTok’s Chinese parent company, Bytedance, must shut down or sell the video platform by September 17. However, on Tuesday evening, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to postpone a potential ban, setting December 16 as the new deadline.
Is a lasting TikTok deal on the way?
On Monday, US President Donald Trump stated on his Truth Social platform that “a deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save.”
“They will be very happy!” Trump’s post continued. “I will be speaking to [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] on Friday. The relationship remains a strong one!!!”
Trump’s sentiment probably also applies to himself. Despite all of his criticism directed at Bytedance, Trump’s own account on TikTok has more than 15.2 million followers. In mid-August, the White House set up its own account, which now has over 977,000 followers.
Trump has repeatedly stated that he plans to save TikTok, which has around 170 million US users.
What are the allegations against Bytedance?
TikTok and, by extension, ByteDance have long been a source of concern for the US government. A law passed during President Joe Biden’s administration requires TikTok to divest its US operations or face removal from app stores. The measure, aimed at curbing potential foreign influence, has sparked legal challenges and public outcry. Following numerous protests, Trump postponed this deadline on Tuesday for the fourth time.
The US has long suspected Bytedance of passing on sensitive user data of US citizens to China. Another allegation is that China uses the algorithm to spread propaganda and disinformation, even without users actively selecting such content. This could politically influence the app’s young target audience. The company rejects the allegations.
There is no concrete evidence, either, and as with other platforms, the algorithm is kept tightly under wraps. Yet there are indications that TikTok may be deliberately promoting content or censoring posts with content unpopular in China.
A prominent example is the case of TikTok user Feroza Aziz, who in 2019 suddenly spoke about the systematic oppression of Uyghurs in China during a makeup tutorial. Shortly after the critical video was published, TikTok temporarily suspended her account, allegedly because of another, older video that violated its guidelines. The suspension was eventually lifted, and the critical video still appears on the platform. Critics nevertheless consider this a case of censorship.
In other cases, TikTok has been accused of throttling certain content or playing it more prominently, also known as shadow banning or hyping. Research by Global Witness, an international human rights organization, into TikTok and X revealed that right-wing content was given preferential treatment, for example, in the case of the German far-right Alternative for Germany political party. The effect was particularly evident on TikTok.
“My best inference is that this is a kind of unintended side effect of algorithms that are based on driving engagement,” Ellen Judson, a senior campaigner looking at digital threats for Global Witness, told the tech platform TechCrunch in February.
In simpler terms: algorithms rely on emotional and simple messages that play right into the hands of right-wing populists.
What user data does TikTok collect?
According to its own privacy policy, TikTok collects a lot of data about its users: age, name, place of residence, email addresses, other contacts, comments, photos, videos, audio recordings, livestreams, comments, hashtags, feedback and reviews, as well as the associated metadata like when, where and by whom the content was created.
Bytedance has stated that US data is stored exclusively in the US and does not end up in China. Whether this is really the case is difficult to verify.
The company has also admitted that it provided incorrect information and that European user data was stored in China. In May 2025, TikTok was fined €530 million ($625 million) by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission for violating the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“Problems of surveillance and algorithmic manipulation in the US will not be solved by targeting just TikTok in this manner,” Oliver Marsh, head of tech research at the German NGO AlgorithmWatch, told DW. “Without better privacy laws, TikTok can acquire user data through other means anyway, including by simply buying from data brokers.”
He further highlighted that without laws that hold platforms accountable for their designs, the US has no options except very blunt tools like this TikTok ban, “which, as we see, leads to a great deal of fighting and few solutions.”
This article was originally written in German.
