Why is TikTok back after being banned for one day?

But it was back after a day with a message thanking incoming president Donald Trump for his "efforts" in restoring the app.

Why is TikTok back?

On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld a law, passed by Congress, to ban TikTok.

It said the ban was "designed to prevent China - a designated foreign adversary - from leveraging its control over ByteDance to capture the personal data of US TikTok users".

The law was due to kick in on Sunday, but on Saturday night, the app went dark.

Users in the US who tried to use it were met with a note reading: "A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately that means you can't use TikTok for now."

Then, on Sunday, the app was back up and running with a message: "Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the US!"

However, that was only for people who already had the app - it was still unavailable to download on app stores in the US.

Posting on Truth Social, a social media platform he owns, Trump said: "I'm asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!"

Trump said he would issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the ban is introduced, "so that we can make a deal to protect our national security".

TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew is expected at Trump's inauguration on Monday afternoon.

Can Trump overturn the ban?

Getty Images Donald Trump stands with a neutral expression on his face.Getty Images

An executive order is an instruction from the president which has the weight of the law behind it.

His order, he said, would give the company time to find a US partner to buy half of the company.

"I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to stay up," he said.

The Biden administration made clear they would not enforce the law - so another option would be for Trump to follow suit and allow the law to stand but tell the Department of Justice (DoJ) to ignore it.

The government would be effectively telling Apple and Google they will not be punished for continuing to allow people to download TikTok onto their devices, meaning the law would remain in place but would essentially be redundant.

Obviously, the firms might be uncomfortable about breaking the law even if they have been told doing so is fine - as it would be effectively requiring them to take the president's word for it that they will not face punishment.

Who could buy TikTok?

Up until now, ByteDance has been resolute that no sale of its prize asset in the US is on the table.

But could that change now that it has actually been banned?

Potential buyers continue to line up - with Bloomberg News reporting on Tuesday that the firm was looking at a sale to billionaire Elon Musk, though TikTok described this as "pure fiction".

Trump's former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt are among those who have previously expressed an interest in buying it.

Mr McCourt, a former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, said he had secured $20bn in verbal commitments from a consortium of investors to bid for TikTok.

There is an even more left field - and considerably less serious - proposed owner.

The biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson - AKA MrBeast - has claimed he is now in the running to make a deal after he had billionaires reaching out to him about it.

What about TikTok's sister apps?

TikTok was the only ByteDance app which became available again after the ban - though only for people who already had the app.

It's still unavailable to download from Apple and Google's app stores.

As of Monday morning, other apps owned by the company are still unavailable to use in the US, The Verge reports.

These include Lemon8, another social media app which has been compared to Pinterest, and CapCut, a video editing app.

Meanwhile Marvel Snap, a digital card game published by a ByteDance subsidiary, also went down - which caught even its US-based developer Second Dinner off guard.

The company posted on X on Sunday that the outage was a "surprise", and later said it "hoped to have it back online within 24 hours".

What platforms could people turn to instead?

TikTok says it has 170 million users in the US who, on average, spent 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024.

While its future is still a little uncertain, rivals such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts may benefit.

Users bring advertisers - so this could be a big financial boost to those platforms.

"Chief marketing officers who we've spoken with confirmed that they will divert their media dollars to Meta and Google if they can no longer advertise on TikTok," said Kelsey Chickering, an analyst at market research company Forrester.

Other potential winners include Twitch, which made its name on hosting livestreams - a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is well known particularly to gamers, though it continues to grow with other content.

Other Chinese-owned platforms, such as Xiaohongshu - known as RedNote among its US users - have seen rapid growth in the US and the UK.

-BBC