TikTok wasn’t the only app about to be banned on January 19, 2025. Its CEO Shou Zi Chew thanked President Donald Trump for delaying the ban until April 5th, 2025. Byetdance apps were returned to the app store, but Bytedance as a whole is still in jeopardy in the United States.
According to Britannica, TikTok is owned by a company called Bytedance, founded by two Chinese entrepreneurs, Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo. “Their goal as developers was to capitalize on the growing mobile Internet market with apps that could enrich their users’ lives.”
Their first app in 2012 was Neihan Duanzi, a meme-sharing app. Four years later, the company made the app Douyin for the Chinese market. It was the equivalent of TikTok and became an inspiration for the app’s creation.
Besides TikTok, Bytedance also made a variety of other apps, including Capcut, a video-editing app, and Guath AI, a photomath type of app.
After Senator Tom Cotton grilled the TikTok CEO about his nationality, some citizens mistakenly believed that TikTok and Bytedance are not Chinese. Although their CEO “was born and raised in Singapore,” Bytedance is a Chinese-owned company.
The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in the TikTok v. Garland case still stands; April 5, 2025 is the new deadline for Bytedance to be sold to an American company.
