Was That Supposed To Be a Joke? On the TikTok Ban
“America has bigger fish to fry and TikTok is not one of them.”
We all know the first thing that we do when we wake up in the mornings . For some it may be pray, meditate, and or just something that is a part of your daily routine. But for the most part, most of us wake up and scroll on TikTok before we roll out of bed.
Before TikTok we had Musically which started in September of 2014. Musically was an app for pre-teens and teens. When Musically was a platform there were hardly almost no adults on the app. Instead this was an era where parents were checking their kids' phones to make sure their kid was making appropriate content.
After having Musically for a few years there was speculation that Musically was going to be a different app. Musically users were highly upset about that because they were gonna lose all features that weren't going to be transferred over from Musically such as their crowns. Crowns meant that you verified, and that you had a sufficient amount of following.
After a few months of the Musically app changing, speculation Musically was finally changed to Tiktok in September of 2016. Musically users weren’t thrilled about the app change at first until they were thrilled. Soon after a slow few months of feeling out Tiktok, Tiktok’s platform started growing. More and mOre people were joining Tiktok to check it out. Musically users were able to receive a verified check mark from Tiktok.The verified check next to their name indicated that they were “Musically but now TikTok famous”. TikTok really blew up after the sinking of dubsmash. A lot of users of Dubsmash came to TikTok when the app was banned.
In the year of 2020 the world was starting to get locked down because of a worldwide pandemic. The worldwide pandemic became the rise of TikTok due to everyone being at home and not having a clue on what the next steps were in the pandemic.
During the pandemic many jobs were lost causing people not know how they were going to pay their bills. People were trying to come up with plans to make ends meet during covid -19 , and that’s when people started to do content creation because TikTok started the TikTok created fund meaning content creators were getting paid to create content for people to watch. Not only that people would pay people who created content to promote their products. This led people to be able to make ends meet.
During the pandemic it was also a depressing time because a lot of loved ones were lost, lots of people were sick, there were barely any physical interactions between humans, and everyone was just staring at the four walls in their house. TikTok was a light for people because other people on TikTok created content to show people remedies for covid,gave people a reason to laugh and smile because some content creators used their gifts to make people laugh. In all, TikTok helped people get through the toughest times of their lives.
But during covid, mainly toward the end of 2020 the President Donald Trump wanted to ban TikTok, but before any action could be taken into place his term was over, and former president Biden took over the white house . When former president Biden took that white house the TikTok ban was put on hold due to larger issues in the country.
The TikTok ban was still up in the air, and there were a few dates that were set for TikTok to get banned, but the actions never followed through. When the 4 years of Biden comes to an end, the TikTok ban topic comes back up into effect. The speculation of TikTok being banned was January 19th.
When TikTok users found out about the ban and heard what was going on they actually thought it was and that it was just being talked about because the last few years TikTok was supposed to be “banned” and never got banned.
Soon after TikTok users started to take the ban seriously and started to inform their followers about their other social media accounts so that they may be still updated with content and just what's going on in their life after TikTok.
With the TikTok era coming to an end TikTok users were going to the app called RedNote as an alternative for TikTok. But the issue is that Donald Trump wanted TikTok to be banned because he feels tha with TikTok being allowed in the U.S it gives China access to U.S data and what is going on in the U.S. But the thing is the company TikTok (ByteDance) is a company that is owned by people that are Chinese. But the owner of TikTok itself is Singaporean.
With the owner of TikTok still being Singaporean Donald Trump and his administration still felt that Tiktok should be banned because they feel that the owner is Chinese even though the owner stated multiple times that he was Singaporean.
Even with all the debates about TikTok being shut down, Tiktok went dark at around 9-10pm January 18th, 2025. People were so confused because TikTok wasn’t supposed to go dark until the 19th of January.
But that wasn’t the weird part about TikTok going dark, the weirdest part was that on Sunday the 19th of January Tiktok was back on around 12-1pm that afternoon . The question that still remains is why. In looking into other articles and seeing what was being said by the president,Trump feels that the people on TikTok, especially the youth, should be able to see and learn more about his inauguration.
Some people commented on this as selfishness, while others were just thankful and praised Trump that TikTok was able to come back to life.
The decision that was made to ban TikTok is a selfish decision because you must take into consideration the platform that people made for themselves on the app TikTok. Taking time to reflect and understand other lives is something that I feel that the government doesn't do but should do. It's selfish to only think about what they think is best for the country and not see what the country thinks about the decisions that they make. It is selfish of the government to take away the platform and revenue people built on Tiktok for their reasons without not actually taking a deeper look inside the issue. The government often doesn’t take into consideration what the people want and need.
Besides worrying about TikTok I feel that we have bigger issues going on in the United States that needs to be addressed and handled such as inflation, homelessness, plane crashes, and many more concerning things that are going on in the United States, These issues that are named are very serious issues that is being overlooked which is sad. President Trump in his rallies said that he was going to lower inflation and the news states that inflation has risen 3% since Trump has been in office, but the focus we have is on TikTok.
America has bigger fish to fry and TikTok is not one of them.