Bay Area TikTok influencer shares her perspective on app restoring service in the U.S.
On Saturday night, TikTok viewers were shocked when the popular video app abruptly shut down ahead of its Sunday deadline. But later in the morning, it was back up and running after President-elect Trump promised that he would not be enforcing the ban for at least 90 days.
It may have delighted the social media world, but some in the legal community are wondering if it is the beginning of a Constitutional crisis.
It may have been the worst nightmare for TikTok fans to wake up to a blank screen and a message announcing that the popular app had been shut down. But then, a little later in the morning, Yetunde Gywa got the relief she was hoping for.
"Oh," she said looking at her phone, "it has a disclaimer that says, 'Welcome back. Thank you for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's effort, TikTok is back in the U.S.'"
Yetunde is a Bay Area social media influencer who makes a side living giving quick, largely positive tours of local restaurants and businesses for her TikTok followers.
On Sunday, she was at Eggy's Neighborhood Kitchen, a breakfast spot in Berkeley that had a long line waiting to get in.
Gywa said she likes that she can introduce people to new places, so, like a lot of young people, she was sad about Saturday night's TikTok shutdown. But when the app reappeared on Sunday, she suspected it was more about political theater.
"I don't know, it feels like a very low effort, 'heroic' effort, from Trump to just say, 'Hey, the app is closed, now I returned it again.' Because his name's on it, saying 'President Trump has restored TikTok again.' So it just seems very performative, I think," said Gywa.
But there are real national security concerns about TikTok's data snooping that convinced both Congress to pass and the Supreme Court to uphold a ban on the Chinese-owned company.
The ban was proposed by President Trump in his first term. But now, he has announced that on Monday he intends to issue an executive order preventing enforcement of the TikTok ban for at least 90 days while he decides what to do about it.
The problem is that he has no authority under the law to do that.
"There's not a provision for that," said attorney John Rizvi, "and that's going to kind of open this up possibly for a Constitutional challenge, whether this is really a violation of the separation of powers between what the president can do versus Congress. And this could be seen as the president going beyond his powers."
John Rizvi is an intellectual property expert, based in Florida. He said limiting the hold to 90 days may soften the issue legally, perhaps as a test to see how far the president-elect can go in defying the authority of Congress and the courts.
"Is this the first of many executive orders that we are going to see and that fear, that many have expressed, of our presidency edging closer and closer to a dictatorship, right?" said Rizvi. "That's essentially what those that express their fears have with this executive order that President Trump says he's going to sign on Monday. This one might be OK, but the worry is, do we really know what the next executive order is going to be?"
It may seem like a trivial issue, whether or not a social media app featuring dance videos can operate or not. But looming over it is the question of whether or not the man who is about to become president understands that there are supposed to be limits to the power of the office.