As Short as a TikTok: The Ban That Wasn’t

So in the end, it only lasted a few hours. In the grand scheme of things, the much spoken-about and much-anticipated ban on TikTok’s services in the US was somewhat on-brand with the social media app’s emphasis on short, snappy videos.

In the early hours of the 19^th January 2025, users in the United States were confronted with the following message when trying to access TikTok:

This was soon changed to the following, after an intervention from the then-President-Elect Trump, who suggested he would give the app a 90-day reprieve from a new law requiring TikTok owner and Beijing-based company ByteDance to sell to a non-Chinese business:

Eventually, after a few hours, TikTok returned with a final message announcing the restoration of services:

Users (and indeed investigators!) in the UK were following this whirlwind with interest, and some amusement. In the brief period the ban was in place, UK users commented that it was great to have TikTok to themselves, and that they were no longer having to be confronted with videos of a cup of tea being heated in a microwave, or mince on toast being termed traditional British cuisine.

At NetWatch we were primarily interested in the effect any ban on a huge percentage of TikTok’s market would have on the app’s general attractiveness to the rest of its active users. Our statistics show that TikTok is the fastest growing social media app when considering how likely we are to locate accounts for individuals across various age groups. This ban would likely have been detrimental to such growth, as where the US leads, the rest of Western culture eventually follows…

Similarly, in the days preceding the ban, many users flocked to TikTok alternatives – the most prominent of these was – ironically – the Chinese app RedNote (officially known as “Xiaohongshu”.) This is effectively the Chinese version of Instagram. Others were speculating that any long-term ban would have seen YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels see increasing traffic, although none of these have the same sort of usability as TikTok, and all use different user-interfaces and algorithmic-systems to keep people engaged.

For now, TikTok only has a 90-day reprieve. However, now-President Trump has stated that he has a ‘warm spot in my heart’ for the app, and as such the prospect of TikTok going dark again seems low. In any case, at NetWatch we will be monitoring events closely.