It’s the tech story that won’t die, but after five years and three extensions, we may finally have an answer to TikTok’s future.
Sept. 17 — less than a month away — marks President Trump’s latest deadline for determining whether the China-based app will be sold to U.S. investors or banned in the country. But as this story has unfolded, it’s become just as much about the fate of one platform as a tale about this administration’s priorities, Trump repeatedly kicking the can down the road and the precarious state of the modern creator economy.
“There’s a free speech element to it, there’s a national security element to it and then there’s a foreign trade element, which is a new introduction to the story since President Trump took office,” Lisa Remillard, a journalist with over 3.8 million TikTok followers, told TheWrap. “It encapsulates every topic that we cover under the Trump administration almost in one story, which is why it’s so important and has dragged on for so many years.”
While the back-and-forth on a TikTok ban remains a juicy topic that has inspired hundreds of breathless think pieces, social posts and talking head news segments, it’s been a source of frustration and confusion for creators — many of whom just want the uncertainty to end. And while the issue hasn’t had a dramatic impact on TikTok usage, the numbers in the U.S. have trended down.
In January 2024, ByteDance — TikTok’s parent company — reported the app had 170 million monthly active users in the United States. The company has been less upfront about how the ban has impacted TikTok, but TheWrap found that U.S. usage has slightly decreased.
While TikTok’s global usage increased by 7% in 2025, its usage in the U.S. decreased by 2%, according to data from the market intelligence firm SensorTower. The social media scheduling company Later found similar results, with the number of planned TikTok posts dropping around the time of the platform’s announced April ban. (Trump later extended the deadline an additional 75 days)
To be clear, TikTok still remains a major social media power player. As of July, SensorTower found that both TikTok and YouTube remained market leaders in the U.S. when it came to watch time, with users averaging 81 minutes a day on both platforms. But as threats of the ban have continued and the overall creator landscape has prioritized platform diversification, weariness around TikTok has risen.
“There’s been this constant stop and start, stop and start,” Remillard said. “At this point, I see mostly two responses [from users]: One, ‘It’s not happening. I’ll believe it when it actually happens.’ And two — I have seen this more and more — which is, ‘Just take it at this point. I don’t care anymore.’”
“The Tiktok ban was supposed to happen months ago. Who knows if it’s going to happen? But that existential threat is a big deal if you don’t know your audience,” Ahad Khan, CEO of the creator marketing company Kajabi, previously told TheWrap.
Spokespeople for TikTok and the White House did not respond when asked for comment.
Early days of the ban
The TikTok ban can be first traced back to August 2020, when Trump signed two executive orders targeting ByteDance. One banned American companies from having any transactions with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, and the other called on ByteDance to divest itself from the app’s U.S. operations in 90 days.
Though the Biden administration initially seemed more welcoming to the app, that didn’t remain the case. Following a BuzzFeed News report claiming that data from U.S. users was accessed by ByteDance employees in China, TikTok announced it migrated user data to U.S. servers managed by the Austin, Texas-based tech company Oracle. That investigation also led to a round of probing by the FBI, culminating in a five-hour congressional hearing with ByteDance CEO Shou Zi Chew in March 2023.
In that hearing, the Singaporean executive said that TikTok is “free from any manipulation from any government” and that he’s seen “no evidence” the Chinese government has access to the data of U.S. users. Yet when asked if TikTok employees could spy on U.S.-based users, Chew did not give a direct answer.
A year after Chew’s hearing, the House of Representatives, Senate and Biden passed a bill requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok to U.S.-based owners or face a ban in the country. That bill was delayed by a lawsuit brought by ByteDance, which called the measure unconstitutional. By the time a Court of Appeals upheld the bill, it was December 2024, throwing the TikTok ball back into the then-re-elected Trump’s court. That’s when this saga really picked up.
Impact of the looming ban in 2025
On Jan. 17, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal law banning TikTok in the U.S., which would go into effect two days later. Hours before the ban was supposed to take place, the app went dark. After President-elect Trump said he was going to “save” TikTok during a rally ahead of his inauguration, the app was restored with the message “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.”
Though it was short-lived, professionals in this space did see an immediate reaction to the platform going dark. “Right before the ban, we saw some advertisers hitting pause for a moment just to see what happened,” Scott Sutton, CEO of Later, told TheWrap. “We did see most of the dollars in the posting activity come back.”
Scheduled posts on TikTok did not dip in any significant way in the three days before TikTok went dark and the three days after it returned, according to Later. However, Threads saw a 10% jump during this time period, and YouTube saw a 6% increase. Best known for developing the widely used link in bio, Later connects creators with top brands and has generated over $2 billion in sales across 120,000 creators. Because the platform posts millions of posts on behalf of its users, its data presents a bird’s-eye view of digital trends.
On the first day of his return to office, Trump signed an executive order stating the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) would not be enforced for 75 days. On April 4, a day before the ban was supposed to go into effect, PAFACA was delayed for another 75 days. A third executive order, signed on June 19, delayed the ban yet again, extending the deadline to Sept. 17.
Around the time of the April deadline, the overall share of Later’s TikTok posts dropped, declining from 5.4% of scheduled posts in mid-March to 3.9% the week after the ban was extended. During that same time period, Instagram’s share of scheduled posts jumped from 47.4% to 53.3%, indicating that users may have pivoted away from TikTok as the ban loomed.
The need to diversify
This looming ban also comes at a time when platform diversification is becoming more vital than ever for creators. That means creators who may have heavily depended on TikTok in the past are branching out to focus more on complementary platforms like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.
“The No. 1 thing that we’re seeing is everyone is taking a multi-platform approach now, leaning into YouTube Shorts, leaning into Instagram, leaning into other ways to keep their audience with them and engage in different ways,” Sutton said. He noted that interest in shortform content has been up from both creators and advertisers. “We’re seeing that trend continue.”
TikTok’s two biggest competitors in the shortform landscape — Instagram and YouTube — did not see a drop in the U.S. during the second quarter, according to SensorTower. Instagram’s daily active users grew by 2%, and in July, 46% of the platform’s usage in the U.S. came from Reels, a 10% increase in shortform viewership from last year. As for YouTube, its daily active users were the same throughout the second quarter with YouTube Shorts accounting for 27% of U.S. user time spent on the platform, a 1% increase.
Khan said the ban is an example of an “existential” concern for creators. Because the goal of social media companies is always to make money for their shareholders, these platforms are always tweaking their algorithms to optimize profits. “If you’re a creator and you’re used to certain rules of the game and that changes overnight, your business can go upside down overnight,” Khan explained.
The game is also changing in a different way. When it comes to brands, follower counts matter less than engagement and overall views. According to Sutton, TikTok remains the best platform if you want views. Instagram provides a relatively equal balance between viewership and engagement. But YouTube is “the most effective platform in terms of pound-for-pound conversion” when it comes to engagement and driving sales.
Confusion, frustration and growing skepticism
Creator Remillard has been steadfastly covering this story on TikTok over the past five years. The comments section of her posts are filled with people discussing the ban, making her an expert on users’ sentiments during this precarious time. When she first started, she noticed TikTok users were confused by the ban and very protective of the app.
“I would say 99% of the people do not like [PAFACA],” Remillard said. “They think it’s over the top and singling out one platform, which, of course, it is.”
Two big examples of users’ outrage came about during Chew’s congressional testimony and the move to China-based RedNote that happened in January. During the 2023 hearing, users mocked U.S. lawmakers for seemingly not understanding how social media works and asking xenophobic questions, with one creator calling the hearing “absolutely embarrassing.” Then, ahead of the first 2025 deadline for the ban, many users flocked to the Chinese alternative RedNote as a middle finger of sorts to the U.S. government.
That frustration, skepticism and nervousness has appeared in TikTokers’ coverage of the ban. When business-focused creator nofilterthomas mentioned that ByteDance was looking to sell the app to U.S. investors in July, he casually added, “That s–t’s not gonna happen,” before advising his followers to download their videos and diversify their platforms in case TikTok goes dark. Joy Breonna, who specializes in providing TikTok tips, advised her followers to juice their TikTok numbers so that they might be grandfathered into certain TikTok programs before the app falls under new management. Creator texpatpat was more nihilistic, telling his followers in July, “We’re actually reaching the end of TikTok in the United States.”
A terms of service change set for Sept. 13 — four days before the latest deadline — has especially put creators on edge. Creator SEAN put the term “banned” in air quotes while breaking down the changes in TikTok’s guidelines. Makeup and skincare creator miafarinacci was more hopeful, telling her followers that the upcoming community changes could be “a good thing” for TikTok users.
“Why would they give us a new set of community guidelines if they’re taking away the app a few days after those come out?” she asked her 49,600 followers in August.
Though it’s gone on for far too long, there’s no evidence this particular social media battle will die down anytime soon. In June, Bloomberg reported that a group of investors that included Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Andreessen Horowitz was interested in purchasing the app — three financial giants who have a history of backing Trump. Reports later claimed Blackstone backed out. That was followed by a report from The Information that the new version of TikTok could include a separate app U.S. users would have to download. That report also claimed the current version of TikTok would work through next March and that ByteDance was waiting for the Chinese government to approve the sale.
This impending sale has left users with a slew of unanswered questions. Will users be able to view posts from non-American users, which is one of the biggest appeals of TikTok? How friendly will a social platform backed by Trump supporters be to the sitting president? Will users stay on the app, or will they flee somewhere else? And if they leave, what will that new app be?
“Once it does change or go away, there’s going to be a lot of shock that it’s actually happening. That’s what I’m trying to prepare my audience for,” Remillard said. ”When it really happens, people are going to start panicking.”
