Fact Check: Law Banning TikTok in U.S. After January 19, 2025 DOES Have Option For Deadline Extension -- Lawsuits Ongoing, New Admin Incoming

Fact Check

  • by: Dean Miller
Fact Check: Law Banning TikTok in U.S. After January 19, 2025 DOES Have Option For Deadline Extension -- Lawsuits Ongoing, New Admin Incoming Path Uncertain

Is there no way to avoid that January 19, 2025, is TikTok's last day of operation in the United States, as implied in a "BREAKING" post on Threads? No, that's not true: On the day the post appeared, there was no breaking news about enforcement of a federal law forcing the sale of TikTok to non-Chinese ownership. The bill signed into law by President Joe Biden gave TikTok owner Bytedance 270 days to sell its stake in the social media platform. The law also allows the president to extend the cutoff if there is evidence of progress toward a sale. In addition, TikTok's owners have sought court protection from the ban. Also, President-elect Donald Trump has said he will save TikTok from the ban.

The claim of TikTok's final day was made in a November 15, 2024, post on Threads (archived here). The caption said:

TikTok's last day is January 19, 2025. 😔😔😔

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

TikTokDead.jpg

(Source: Threads.com screenshot taken Tue Nov 25 01:41:38 2024 UTC)

The post on Threads offered no evidence there had been "BREAKING" news about a political battle that has been ongoing since the first Trump administration. A date-restricted search (archived here) of Google's index of billions of web pages showed no sudden developments during the month preceding the post.

There are multiple ways the post on Threads exaggerates the certainty of TikTok's final day of operation in the U.S.:

  1. By law, the deadline on hosting TikTok by U.S. internet services can be extended by the president if the president certifies to Congress that ByteDance has made progress toward the goal of removing Chinese ownership of TikTok. The ban was instituted in response to the concerns of national security agencies that China can use TikTok to spy on Americans and influence Americans.
  2. Biden signed the ban into law on April 24, 2024. TikTok then filed suit, asking the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to block the ban on constitutional grounds. Oral arguments were heard September 16, 2024. No judgement had been published as of November 25, 2024, but a ruling or a stay of enforcement pending further hearings could forestall the ban.
  3. In September 2024, more than a month before the Threads post declaring TikTok is shutting down, President-elect Donald Trump promised, on his Truth Social account, to save TikTok. Whether that means extending the deadline or seeking amendment to the law banning TikTok, he has not elaborated since this September 4, 2024, post (archived here) in which he wrote: "FOR ALL OF THOSE THAT WANT TO SAVE TIK TOK IN AMERICA, VOTE TRUMP!"Trump Truth.jpg

(Source: Truth Social screenshot taken Tue Nov 25 03:04:00 2024 UTC)

The post on Threads offered no evidence for its declaration that the TikTok ban will be enforced without extensions, without court action and without presidential intervention.

(Editors' Note: TikTok is a client of Lead Stories. On our About page, you will find the following information: "Since April 2020 we also provide fact checking related advice and services to ByteDance, the company running TikTok.)

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  Dean Miller

Lead Stories Managing Editor Dean Miller has edited daily and weekly newspapers, worked as a reporter for more than a decade and is co-author of two non-fiction books. After a Harvard Nieman Fellowship, he served as Director of Stony Brook University's Center for News Literacy for six years, then as Senior Vice President/Content at Connecticut Public Broadcasting. Most recently, he wrote the twice-weekly "Save the Free Press" column for The Seattle Times. 

Read more about or contact Dean Miller

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization EFCSN Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


WhatsApp Tipline

Have a tip or a question? Chat with our friendly robots on WhatsApp!

Add our number +1 (404) 655-4223, follow this link or scan the image below with your phone:

@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion