I’m sure many of you, like myself, were upset and confused about the TikTok ban we were told was happening on January 19th this year…on the bright side it only lasted about 12 hours. But why? Well it was banned in the first place because lawmakers were concerned about supposed risks that the Chinese owned social media app posed to our national security and personal data privacy. The app was just banned in the United States, but all other creators around the world still retained access to the app. The platform itself was not shut down at all, just adjusted so that if a user lived in the United States they would no longer be able to access it.

January 18th at around 10:00 pm was when everything went down. Basically two hours earlier than normal, the people that were still scrambling to save their videos to their camera roll were absolutely screwed. Users had the ability to not only create and develop their own personal videos, but to like and save videos from other creators in specific folders. Saved recipes, edits, things to buy, and just funny videos in general were all gone. When refreshing the app trying to get it to work again, the message just read “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” but a little while later it updated to read as this:

Now there were a variety of responses to this from conspiracy theorists to mourners to new revealing trends to people who deleted the app itself. Some people, in addition to saving their most favorite videos, also had watch parties of their funniest saved videos in commemoration of the app just as a way to look at everything one last time. Although the app is now back up and running in the United States, that will be the last time for some of those people. The app has been restored to working status, but it is no longer available for download in the United States, so anyone who deleted the app off of their phone when the ban went live…they’re out of luck.

One interesting thing that did come from the ban was the new trend it created and the influencers it exposed. The sound on each video was “since we’re all gonna die…there’s one more secret I feel like I have to share with you” and then as the sound continued playing the creator would put text up revealing something about their online personna that was fake all along. Influencers have revealed all types of things: to the fact that some don’t actually do the workouts they posted, a couple diet influencers stated they didn’t eat all of the meals they created, or other things about how the very things they got famous for were just an illusion. It was quite the awkward return for some influencers who outed themselves coming back to their platform to say the least.

Although the app was not even gone from the American people for less than 24 hours, the controversy it caused will definitely have lasting effects. Some have even gone so far as to theorize that TikTok is different now and not in a good way… either way I am happy to have it back and hope that nothing else bad happens!! Cross your fingers!