(A very temporary) RIP to American TikTok
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Text, call, or chat the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Compassionate counselors respond 24-7 with no judgment, just help. 988lifeline.org. On Saturday evening, TikTok in the United States went dark. That was after a ban issued by the American government and upheld by the United States Supreme Court came into effect. More than 170 million TikTok users in the U.S. could no longer use the app.

They lost the audience that once watched videos of them getting ready in the morning and making viral recipes like tomato ice toast and dill pickle seasoned with candy powder and using filters to enhance their spicy thirst traps. Many people went into mourning. Seeing it go was definitely very emotional for me. The rest of us elsewhere in the world, we went on scrolling the app as usual.

But on Sunday, after President-elect Donald Trump said he'd work to restore service in the U.S., the app was up and running. It's back. It feels like Christmas, basically. We're recording this just before the start of the inauguration on Monday morning, so by the time you listen to this, President Trump might have issued an executive order to delay the TikTok ban. In any case, we're going to bring you up to speed. I'm William Lee Adams, and this is What in the World from the BBC World Service. ♪

Back in December, we did an episode called Could Donald Trump Stop a TikTok Ban in the U.S.? And the answer to that now is maybe. Joe Tidey is our cyber correspondent. First off, Joe, can you remind us what issues the American government had with TikTok in the first place?

Well, there's broadly three issues. First of all is the data collection. So TikTok catches and gathers about as much data as other likewise apps. So the ones run by Meta, for example, Facebook, Instagram, Threads.

Snapchat as well run by Snap. They gather a huge amount of data about us, the things we like, the things we comment on, the things we look at, the things that we end up buying in their shops, that kind of thing. But the issue here is that all of that data has historically gone to what you would sort of call trusted US companies, the likes of Meta and Snap and Google.

ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is not an American company. It's a Chinese company. So the concern there is where's all that data going? Secondly, it's about potential propaganda. So, for example, could ByteDance, the Chinese owners of TikTok, change the algorithm to make it so that the videos we're watching are pro-Chinese or anti-Chinese?

anti-American, that kind of thing, in the same way that media organizations like TV channels or newspapers are potentially problematic in terms of bias. The American national security advisors say that TikTok could potentially be a problem there. And the third is whether or not the app could be used in some way to disrupt or cause problems to people in the event of some sort of conflict with China. So, for example, could there be a, I don't know, this is a crazy idea, of course, but could there be a

a potential bit of malware that is attached to people's phones through TikTok. That has been a kind of wildcard concern, but that's the kind of third one that we've seen.

So based on all that, the U.S. Congress passed a law with wide support from both sides, both political parties. President Biden signed it. The Supreme Court upheld it. And TikTok finally stopped working in the U.S. on Saturday. But then on Sunday afternoon, it was back up. So is TikTok banned at the moment or not? Yeah.

It's a very good question. Yes, it was a bit of an eight-hour sort of dramatic time of people joking around about all the things they managed to get done during that brief period of the great TikTok outage, which didn't last very long. Right now, of course, it is illegal in a sense to have the app running in the US because it hasn't been sold to a US company. That was the deal. That was what the law said. But we have heard noises, of course, from

from President Biden's administration, the outgoing administration, saying that they wouldn't enforce it. They would leave it to the Trump administration. The Trump administration has already said that it would repeal the law. Some sort of executive order is coming to reverse the ban. So it's in a kind of grey area. And that's why I think TikTok did the outage and then brought it back. Obviously, there's the publicity stunt of it, but also it's

They don't know either whether or not it's legal to run TikTok in the country. What is interesting, though, is you can still go on TikTok. It is a live app in the U.S., but you can't download it as a new customer, as a new user. So that's a potential area where they're thinking, OK, that is that is probably crossing a line here, but we will still keep it open for the U.S.

And for a while, TikTok seemed to be expressing gratitude to President Trump in pop-up messages. They said they were fortunate he would work to reinstate the app. A lot of folks have said that kind of reads as political theater. Is there a sense that all of this rigmarole is just to make him look like a hero? I don't know. I don't think that...

TikTok is that interested in making President Trump look good. I think what's more likely is they are fighting for their survival. They have been now for the last few years, of course. But I saw that message from TikTok, that pop up as a kind of like, don't worry, President Trump has promised we'll be back.

In a sense, what they're doing there is making sure that the users of TikTok, the 170 million users in the US, know that it's President Trump who's going to save it. And they've kind of reinforced that promise to the users with that message, I think. That's how I looked at it. I don't really feel like the executives at TikTok...

would necessarily mind what happens to President Trump's presidency, whether it's a success or not. They just want to keep that app going. That is it is one of the biggest apps in the world is an absolute monster of a cultural phenomenon. And nothing has come close to matching the kind of dominance of the US tech giants in the last 10 years, apart from TikTok.

And if we rewind, President Trump was the man who wanted to ban TikTok in the first place. What's his motivation now in trying to stall the ban? Yes, that's the remarkable thing here is that Trump was so anti-TikTok. He said this is a major national security concern. The Chinese are inside the mobile phones of U.S. citizens. This is an absolute potential devastating situation.

But then he goes out of the presidency. Biden comes in. Biden sort of agrees with him in that sense. Everything goes through the courts. And then something happened. Something happened about two years ago where President Trump started seeing, first of all, he was getting a little bit of traction on TikTok. He was getting some decent likes and decent views. He credits it with helping his reelection campaign. He talks about this person in his campaign team called TikTok Jack.

some young advisor somewhere who apparently was running the TikTok campaign for him. And Trump credits that person and that platform with helping him get reelected. Then, of course, you have to remember that there was a point in which during his time out of office, he was very much against Facebook. He called Facebook an enemy of the people because, of course, Facebook banned him after the uprising and the

against the Capitol. So there was this point in which he didn't want to ban TikTok because it would help Meta. It would help Facebook. So you really you've got to it's a bit of a roller coaster when you're trying to think about how Donald Trump feels about certain things. And with TikTok, there has been this flipping and flopping. And we still don't currently know what the situation is because he said he wants to bring it back. But in what kind of guise? The president, of course, can stall the ban for 90 days. But can he actually overturn it?

No one knows. It's a massive grey area. I was talking to the team this morning and we were saying that the experts that we've all been speaking to have said different things because executive orders can override lots of things. But this is a law that's been through the US courts, bipartisan support, upheld by the Supreme Court and the national security concerns about TikTok have

theoretical or otherwise, are very, very clearly stated in the law. These concerns haven't gone away. The only thing that's changed here is that Donald Trump is now a fan of TikTok. And as we mentioned earlier, the American government wants someone, an American buyer, to purchase TikTok from its Chinese owner, ByteDance. Who could that be? Someone with very deep pockets. It would cost dozens of billions because TikTok is

Well, it's the hottest app around, isn't it? Let's face it, it has been for the last few years. And ByteDance does not want to get rid of it, does not want to cede it over. Neither does the Chinese government. They have both said we are not selling TikTok. And that's partly why we got to this point. We've got to this stalemate where TikTok hasn't been sold. The laws come into effect. And now we're in this sort of strange limbo period where no one knows whether or not the app is running legally or not in the country.

You mentioned earlier how people in the U.S. can't download the app at the moment. But on the other side of this, will people in the U.S. see any changes on the app?

It depends. So if things carry on as they are, then of course, new users can't download the app, but also current users won't be able to download updates. And this has been the kind of prediction of what might happen before any idea of a reversal of the ban came in. If the ban went through as everyone expected, what we would see is pretty much what we're seeing now. The app continues to run and people can still access content on TikTok.

But what you can't do is download it as a new user and you can't download updates. So what you'll see over time is a sort of degradation of the quality of the app. Bugs will set in, which means that the updates can't fix those. New features won't be added because you can't download those. Eventually, the app might become dangerous because, of course, over time...

hackers might find vulnerabilities in the app, which normally the everyday kind of monthly software updates that you do without even thinking about it, they wouldn't happen. So there might be vulnerabilities and holes in the security of the app. And I think the other thing to bear in mind, of course, is that

If that is the way that it went, the TikTok app would be sort of frozen in its current state, whereas the dominant rivals like threads or Instagram Reels or Snapchat or YouTube Shorts, they will improve their quality of their service. And what that might do is, of course,

push back TikTok. And eventually there will be a slow migration anyway, regardless of what the law says. And lastly, Joe Tidy, are you a TikTok user? I am indeed. Yes. I use it quite a lot. It's one of my first used apps, I would say. And I do post on there. And I'm very disappointed because I posted a video of me throwing a big ice cube

the other day and it's uh it's the biggest video ever done and that's after years of doing you know trying to do proper journalism videos on tiktok and of course throwing a block of ice will always trump um my work you found a new calling joe tidy is our cyber correspondent thank you for explaining all that thank you

Content creators who make money from TikTok have been particularly worried. For them, the ban could mean losing their livelihood on top of losing the communities they've built online. We heard a bit of Lauren Godwin in the intro. Her main income is from TikTok. I've been on the app since before it was TikTok. I've been on it for seven years since it was Musical.ly. So I've grown over 22 million followers. It definitely was just like, you know, very scary for me since this is my livelihood and everything like that. But all

Now, this is not the first time the app has been subjected to a countrywide ban.

India banned it five years ago. At the time, TikTok had 200 million users in India, making it the app's biggest market outside of China. Content creators were forced to switch to other platforms, and this is what it was like for them. My name is Sucharita Tyagi. I am Indian, but I live between Mumbai and New York City. I started using TikTok when it was at its sort of peak in India. I

The ban went into effect just seemingly out of the blue. It was one of the many apps that the government of India had randomly decided to ban. A lot of other platforms took off, most notably Instagram Reels because it launched right after. And Instagram Reels is probably the biggest short-form video content in India right now. I would say YouTube Shorts.

With the threat of a TikTok ban looming, loads of American TikTok users have been searching for alternatives, and many set up accounts on a popular Chinese social media app called Xiaohongshu or Red Note.

Ko Yu is our reporter in Singapore. We spoke to her before the temporary TikTok outage took place over the weekend. Hi William. So people outside of China, they know Instagram, they know TikTok, but they may not know RedNote. Could you tell us about the app? Right. RedNote has about 300 million monthly users, but most of them are in mainland China or in Mandarin-speaking populations like Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.

It's most popular among young women. They use it as a source for fashion inspiration and lifestyle tips. And the name Red Note, what does that mean exactly?

Red Note in Chinese, it means it says Xiao Hong Shu, which translates to Little Red Book. Interestingly, it's also what Chairman Mao's book of quotations used in the Cultural Revolution was called. But the company has said that, you know, it is not a reference to that Little Red Book. Okay, maybe Red for good luck. We'll take it at that. And what about the interface? Does it look similar to TikTok or is it starkly different?

So it is pretty much similar to TikTok, but it also has some similarities to Instagram. So on Red Note, you can either choose to scroll among a grid of photos, kind of like our Instagram explore page, or you can click into individual posts and then scroll from there like TikTok. Ah, okay. Why are people choosing to migrate to Red Note as opposed to other apps?

They are doing so partly because they're also looking for new communities with this looming TikTok ban. They're trying to find new places where they can build communities and engage with other social media users. And the reason why they're choosing to go to Red Note, a Chinese app, comes from a place of spite. So Red Note users that I spoke to, they call themselves TikTok refugees because they just migrated from TikTok. And some of them are

And some of them say that they made the move to RedNote because it's a Chinese app, which was the reason why the US government tried to ban TikTok in the first place. And since its founding, this has sort of been a playground for the people of the Mandarin-speaking world.

How are users reacting to this sudden influx of foreign users? For the most part, they have been very welcoming. There has been a lot of exchange between these two originally separate internet cultures and people are interacting, you know, TikTok users and Red Note users in a way that has never really happened before.

And people are realizing that maybe their sense of humor isn't so different after all. So we have Chinese users asking these new TikTok refugees for help with their English homework. They are posting pictures of the exercises they have to do in English, asking for the answers. They're also asking about American slang that they could never really understand.

Chinese users are also posting tutorials teaching basic Chinese phrases to these American users. I was on Instagram and I was being fed a series of videos kind of grabbed from Red Note. And in these videos, it showed Chinese people sort of saying, welcome, we offer you refuge from the United States of America. It's almost like they were mocking the American government there.

Is that a trending item at the moment? Is that a big talking point, the fears of the United States and banning TikTok?

You're right, it definitely is. Besides, you know, welcoming these TikTok refugees, Chinese users are also calling themselves Chinese spies. That's a joke, of course. You know, this is in reference to the US government claiming that TikTok could be used for espionage. And they're really, you know, leaning into this and almost making it a meme. Kou Yu, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much.

As we heard from Joe, the TikTok rollercoaster is still in motion. An executive order from President Trump could delay the TikTok ban in the United States by 90 days. On Friday, Mr. Trump said the delay would be in effect until, in his words, we figure something out. So, so much remains unclear.

That's all for today. If you want to hear even more about TikTok, we've got several episodes in our feed, like what's happening to music on TikTok and how the far right is using TikTok in Germany. Just search for those wherever you're listening to this. I'm William Lee Adams, and you've been listening to What in the World from the BBC World Service. We'll see you again soon. Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by.

And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After the yoga classes, I felt amazing. But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders. ♪

I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards, I have nothing. The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave.

You just get sucked in so gradually.

And it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. And it's like this, the secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me,

was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice.

and for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future. To bring it into the light and almost alchemise some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power. World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.