Influencer-in-Chief
The night TikTok went dark, Vasilis Velanis was in his friend’s dorm on the 21st floor of McKeon Hall. He held his phone in one hand and a soda in the other, swiping and simultaneously engaging in conversation with his friends.
Jan. 18 was supposed to be a normal night spent scrolling and laughing. Instead, a dreadful thought was suffocating the room: in a few hours, the browsing would stop.
Unsure of what would happen on Jan. 18, Velanis, Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) ’28, took the initiative and decided to search for alternatives.
“I did get Rednote, which was the Chinese alternative for TikTok. It was not the best,” Velanis said later.
At 10:30 p.m., Velanis’ surroundings changed. After briefly scrolling and laughing with his friends, the room went silent. The atmosphere shifted.
“My friends were extremely devastated,” Velanis said as he explained the change in mood. “They were crying, talking about how Charli D’Amelio never got to do the ‘WAP.’”
Velanis was aggravated. But he soon decided to take advantage of the situation. He took the opportunity to have a “nice 16-hour detox,” he said. When looking back, he remarked, “it was very fun while it lasted.”
“Oh my gosh, those few hours,” Dove Ajmani, Fordham College at Rose Hill ’28, said. When the app was dark for some, that desire to scroll stuck around.
“I remember being on FaceTime with my friend,” Ajmani said, “and she was sharing her for you page just for all of us. It was so chaotic and there was no reason for that, but it’s part of daily life.”
That day might have been rough for some students. But Fordham Law Professor Olivier Sylvain said it was “a great time to go outside.”
TikTok made an announcement on people’s screens at approximately 9:30 p.m. and officially went black at 10:30 p.m. Just a day before the app went dark, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) upheld a 2024 law banning the app. Although the ban was briefly acted on, for the past three years TikTok has been in the midst of many legal battles over potential bans, none of which were followed through.
The ban took place as expected, but less than 24 hours later, like some students anticipated, it was rebooted. Even though many predicted this, what was unexpected were the three messages directly addressing the United States Government.
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means that you can’t use TikTok for now,” the statement said. “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
The messages directly referring to President Donald Trump came as a surprise to many. But others were expecting the announcement. Fordham students said it could be viewed as an attempt by the Trump administration to gain trust and attention from younger users.
A concern raised by the reasoning behind the possibility is: Why has a social media platform been entangled within an international struggle?
While initially the Trump administration held a strong opposition against the app, it suddenly took a milder stance. Late in the second week of February, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent out a letter to Apple and Google which assured the companies that restoring TikTok in the app stores would not infringe on the newly established law and avoid incurring a hefty fine.
As a means to remain above the law, these tech companies have to be cooperative and remain civil with Trump, illuminating a deeper motive behind the ban: getting TikTok and other major social media platforms on Trump’s side.
This all started during Trump’s 2020 reelection bid. He said that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, had allegiances to China’s ruling party. By this reasoning, China could assert its governmental power and ask for information on American citizens.
Because of this, Trump argued, TikTok needed to be banned in the U.S.
Students had a lot to say about this reasoning. And some were unsure the national security claims were legitimate — especially when Congress heavily questioned TikTok’s CEO in the spring of 2023.
“Watching the hearing, they are making unjust statements. And the CEO was coming back and giving really logical responses,” Jenny Klein, FCLC ’28, said. “But they were pushing forward their motives.”
Aaron O’Brien, Gabelli School of Business at Lincoln Center ’28, said, “it’’s been sold to us that there is so much Chinese spying, which is just an interesting thing.” When expanding on his thoughts about the government’s statement on national security, O’Brien said that we do not know how valid those claims are. “I feel like that’’s kind of just assumed that they are,” he said.
Sylvain, who specializes in public lawmaking and information technology issues, agreed that the national security concerns are a little hazy. He said that there might be an underlying double standard when it comes to scrutiny of TikTok, but not scrutiny of other U.S.-based apps.
“A lot of social media companies are in the business of collecting consumers’ information, and TikTok is not the only one,” Sylvain said.
When it comes to having concerns over a foreign app, and not others, Sylvain said he is “probably closer to these critics who were concerned that people were holding out TikTok in a kind of xenophobic, mildly racist, anti-Chinese way.”
“That’s what a lot of people who challenged the statue alleged,” Sylvain said. “They said we can’t just rely on these assertions by national security officials that China may do this or has done it when there is no evidence of it.”
Sylvain added that, even if there was evidence, “no one in the public has seen it, right? It’s all confidential.”
Even so, these privacy concerns were still a major topic. “That’s why the momentum continues through the Biden administration,” Sylvain said. “It wasn’t just slipped in.”
In April 2024, years after Trump had first brought the idea of a TikTok ban into the public discourse, former President Biden signed a bipartisan infrastructure bill that included many special interest projects. Within that legislative package, the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” — the bill that would begin the process of a TikTok ban — became law.
Months later, the SCOTUS heard arguments against the law’s constitutionality. Multiple parties had filed lawsuits against the ban. Yet the court, in a unanimous ruling, decided that the ban was, in fact, constitutional. It was set to go into effect the day before Trump’s inauguration.
As the Biden presidency concluded, law enforcement officials said that they would not enforce the ban or fines against TikTok service providers until Trump came into office. Essentially, Biden’s White House declined to enforce the ban, even though he himself had already signed it.
“Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration,” White House Press Secretary Karien Jean-Pierre said in a statement the day of the ruling.
“The Biden White House and the Department of Justice have failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability,” the company said in a statement on Jan. 18. “TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19.”
And it did. That is, until it came back online, greeting users in a pop-up window statement that said that “as a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
Trump signed an Executive Order on the first night he was in office, effectively stating that he would not enforce the ban for more than two months.
Sylvain noted that many presidents before have used discretion on how laws and statutes are enforced. However, there has not been a president who has deliberately gone against the will of the legislative and judicial branches this deliberately.
For Sylvain, Trump’s reversal “underscores how potentially unprincipled the current president is on these issues. One might like to believe that he is an advocate for free speech — but it’s hard to accept it,” Sylvain said. “Four years before, when he thought TikTok was dangerous for him, he wasn’t.”
“I think many of us are uncomfortable thinking that the president is not faithfully executing the laws — as required under Article Two of the Constitution — on day one,” Sylvain said. “Given that there is a roadmap set up by Congress, no matter whether you think the statute was a good idea,” Sylvain stipulated, the fact that Trump has declined to enforce “is deeply troubling, at least.”
After the ban, spurred on by Trump and signed into law by Biden, was unanimously upheld by SCOTUS, both former presidents — one after the other — declined to enforce it.
The whole conversation surrounding TikTok with all the flip-flopping and abdication of enforcement, made some students speculate on what, if anything, is behind all this politicking?
Some see the TikTok ban as a way for Trump to increase his likeness amongst the youth of America. Ironically, the one to kick start the ban and who now has become essentially the protector of it.
Klein said she feels as if “TikTok thanking Trump for removing the ban was possibly an attempt for Trump to get in the good graces with the younger generation.” She wondered if since during Trump’s first presidency, he received a lot of hate through the app, he now wants them to “have them have a better view of him as a president.”
Karin Kellner-Ongaro, FCLC ’28, saw the message as a “good political move because a lot of people our age do not support Trump.” She said, “By selling this thing as ‘Trump brought back TikTok,’ he is seen as a savior.”
By this way of thinking, this is a power play for Trump. It is a way for him to sway the youth towards his side even though he was the one who initiated the conversation regarding the ban.
Sylvain agreed with Kellner Ongaro’s view and said that the reversal of Trump’s 2016 attitude means that Trump may want to be seen as a heroic figure in the eyes of Americans.
“Trump uses this as an opportunity. He says ‘I will save America.’” Sylvain mused. But now that that position is unpopular, “his tune has changed.”
Other students had a more critical approach — one where optics did not matter as much as control over the informational ecosystem.
Some found it ironic how a country that prides itself on freedom is trying to ban an immensely powerful app. As for Klein, she criticized the banning of TikTok, saying that a lot of “countries in the world, plus America, look down” on governments who censor information.
Klein expressed further concern, stating that she does not “think censorship is a good thing. I don’t think it’s a good direction for the country to be going in.”
“If they ban one app, what else are they going to ban?” she said.
TikTok is seen as a means for people to gain information that sometimes mainstream media will shy away from. Many have noticed that TikTok has changed and that they have been viewing right-wing content that they previously did not.
Ajmani, the student who vicariously enjoyed TikTok over the phone during the night it went dark, explained that after the ban, her for you page has changed significantly. “I don’t know if it’s just me,” Ajmani prefaced. But she’s been seeing “a lot of pro-MAGA stuff. And I’ve never seen anything about protesting at all. I’ve not had anything on my for you page about it,” Ajmani said. She said that her friends would sometimes ask her, “Did you see this?” And she would respond “No, I literally haven’t.”
Kellner-Ongaro explained that the ban impacted the content she saw on TikTok too. Before the night it went dark, she was getting a lot of right-wing content, “not even Trump, but it was heavy right-wing, almost Nazi,” she said. “And then the ban came. And after that, I’ve never ever seen again a political video. Never. Still to this day.”
According to the law, the alternative to a ban would be “qualified divestiture” — essentially for ByteDance to sell. But that comes with its own risks, according to students.
When asked about the prospective buyers of TikTok, O’Brien, the Gabelli student, said “if it went into the hands of someone like Elon Musk, who’s now creating a monopoly on social media, that would be kind of crazy.” And explained that “if it’s just another random U.S. buyer, I don’t think that’s that crazy.”
Willa Van Cleaf, FCLC ’28, said she has not had much experience with the app. “It wasn’t that life-changing for me just because I never had it,” Van Cleaf said. As a result, the ban wasn’t as big a deal to her.
When it came to who might own the app, Van Cleaf did have thoughts. She said that “only a few people have enough wealth in the U.S. to buy TikTok. It could have been Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or one of the other big tech bros.”
These tech billionaires are known for their close ties with President Trump, sitting in front of his inauguration. For Van Cleaf, this is problematic because it further concentrates power over information in our increasingly digital age. In the heat of the 2024 election, there was a cultural shift toward the right for a lot of these social media executives.
This all kick-starts a conversation on a topic that Americans care deeply about: censorship. If billionaires begin to have control over social media, who is protecting Americans’ right to privacy? Trump has delayed enforcing federal law, drawing both TikTok and other media empires like Google and Apple into tighter confidence.
For now, Trump’s 75-day pause has been further delayed by Bondi’s letter to app-store companies. However, since Elon Musk declined to buy the app, the future of the social media platform is, at least for now, uncertain.
