TikTok is once again on the verge of being banned in the US.
Parent company ByteDance has until June 19 to reach a deal to either sell off the short-form video app or shut it down, leaving its 170 million users in the dark.
President Trump previously signaled that he was open to extending the deadline for the sale a third time. The app briefly went offline in January, but Trump pushed the date to April as negotiations around a sale continued to drag on.
He signed a second executive order extending the deadline again, but that will expire Thursday. Trump has the option to further extend the sale date, but questions remain about how long he can continue to move the deadline before ByteDance is finally forced to sell or turn off the app.
Trump initially called for a ban on TikTok during his first term in office but changed his stance during the 2024 election, saying that it serves as a bulwark against Meta’s (META) social media dominance. Trump has a contentious history with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The chief executive suspended Trump from his platforms following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and Trump later threatened to jail Zuckerberg.
In January, Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over the suspension.
Trump has also credited TikTok with drawing young voters to his reelection effort and invited the company’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, to his inauguration alongside other tech leaders, including Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, Google (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai, and Zuckerberg.
Congress initially passed and former President Joe Biden signed the law banning TikTok in 2024. The legislation calls for TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to divest itself of the social network. If it doesn’t, US cloud providers and app stores are required to stop hosting the service or face steep fines.
The Trump administration, however, has assured cloud and app store companies that they will not face fines while the deadline is extended.
TikTok previously tried to fight the law banning the app, taking its battle to the Supreme Court. But the court sided with the government’s argument that the app could pose a national security threat.
US officials have for years argued that the Chinese government could use TikTok to spread propaganda or gather information on American users that it could then use to blackmail them in the future, but haven’t publicly shared evidence of the danger.
The prospect of a TikTok sale has garnered interest from a number of potential suitors. A group of investors led by billionaire Frank McCourt Jr. has expressed interest in buying the app, as have Microsoft, internet personality Mr. Beast, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
