SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If it feels like TikTok has been around forever, that's probably because it has, at least if you're measuring via internet time. What's now in question is whether it will be around much longer and, if so, in what form?
Starting in 2017, when the Chinese social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has grown from a niche teen app into a global trendsetter. While, of course, also emerging as a potential national security threat, according to U.S. officials.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed legislation requiring TikTok parent ByteDance to sell to a U.S. owner within a year or to shut down. It's not clear whether that law will survive an expected legal challenge or that ByteDance would agree to sell.
Here's how TikTok came to this juncture:
ByteDance is founded in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first hit product is Toutiao, a personalized news aggregator for Chinese users.
Startup Musical.ly, later known for an eponymous app used to post short lipsyncing music videos, is founded in China by entrepreneur Alex Zhu.
Musical.ly hits #1 in the Apple App Store, following a design change that made the company's logo visible when users shared their videos.
ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese users. Its popularity inspires the company to spin off a version for foreign audiences called TikTok.
ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. Nine months later, ByteDance merges it with TikTok.
Powered by an algorithm that encourages binge-watching, users begin to share a wide variety of video on the app, including dance moves, kitchen food preparation and various “challenges” to perform, record and post acts that range from serious to satirical.
Rapper Lil Nas X releases the country-trap song “Old Town Road” on TikTok, where it goes viral and pushes the song to a record 17 weeks in the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The phenomenon kicks off a wave of TikTok videos from musical artists who suddenly see TikTok as a critical way to reach fans.
TikTok settles federal charges of violating U.S. child-privacy laws and agrees to pay a $5.7 million fine.
The Washington Post reports that while images of Hong Kong democracy protests and police crackdowns are common on most social media sites, they are strangely absent on TikTok. The same story notes that TikTok posts with the #trump2020 tag received more than 70 million views.
The company insists that TikTok content moderation, conducted in the U.S., is not responsible and says the app is a place for entertainment, not politics.
The Guardian reports on internal documents that reportedly detail how TikTok instructs its moderators to delete or limit the reach of videos touching on topics sensitive to China such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent massacre, Tibetan independence or the sanctioned religious group Falun Gong.
U.S. politicians begin to raise alarms about TikTok's influence, calling for a federal investigations of its Musical.ly acquisition and a national security probe into TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps. That investigation begins in November, according to news reports.
The Pentagon recommends that all U.S. military personnel delete TikTok from all phones, personal and government-issued. Some services ban the app on military owned phones. In January, the Pentagon bans the app from all military phones.
TikTok becomes the second-most downloaded app in the world, according to data from analytics firm SensorTower.
Privacy groups file a complaint alleging TikTok is still violating U.S. child-protection laws and flouting a 2019 settlement agreement. The company “takes the issue of safely seriously” and continues to improve safeguards, it says.
TikTok hires former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive officer in an apparent attempt to improve its U.S. relations. Mayer resigns three months later.
India bans TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps in response to a border clash with China.
President Donald Trump says he is considering banning TikTok as retaliation for China's alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump issues a sweeping but vague executive order banning American companies from any “transaction” with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, including TikTok. Several days later, he issues a second order demanding that ByteDance divest itself of TikTok's U.S. operations within 90 days.
Microsoft confirms it is exploring acquisition of TikTok. The deal never materializes; neither does a similar overture from Oracle and Walmart. TikTok, meanwhile, sues the Trump administration for alleged violation of due process in its executive orders.
Joe Biden is elected president. He doesn't offer new policy on TikTok and won't take office until January, but Trump's plans to force a sale of TikTok start to unravel anyway. The Trump administration extends the deadlines it had imposed on ByteDance and TikTok and eventually lets them slide altogether.
Newly sworn-in President Joe Biden postpones the legal cases involving Trump's plan to ban TikTok, effectively bringing them to a halt.
TikTok announces it has more than a billion monthly active users.
A Wall Street Journal report finds TikTok algorithms can flood teens with a torrent of harmful material such as videos recommending extreme dieting, a form of eating disorder.
TikTok announces new rules to deter the spread of harmful material such as viral hoaxes and promotion of eating disorders.
“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a project created by two fans of the Netflix show as a TikTok project, wins the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.
TikTok becomes the most downloaded app in the world, beating out Instagram, according to SensorTower data.
BuzzFeed reports that China-based ByteDance employees have repeatedly accessed the nonpublic information of TikTok users, based on leaked recordings from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings. TikTok responds with a vague comment touting its commitment to security that doesn't directly address the BuzzFeed report.
TikTok also announces it has migrated its user data to U.S. servers managed by the U.S. tech firm Oracle. But that doesn't prevent fresh alarm among U.S. officials about the risk of Chinese authorities accessing U.S. user data.
FBI Director Chris Wrap raises national security concerns about TikTok, warning that Chinese officials could manipulate the app's recommendation algorithm for influence operations.
ByteDance also said it fired four employees who accessed data on journalists from Buzzfeed News and The Financial Times while attempting to track down leaks of confidential materials about the company.
The White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure TikTok is deleted from all government-issued mobile devices. Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warn that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with China’s authoritarian government.
Legislators grill TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at a six-hour congressional hearing where Chew, a native of Singapore, attempts to push back on assertions that TikTok and ByteDance are tools of the Chinese government.
TikTok said it was restricting a tool some researchers use to analyze popular videos on the platform.
A bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to a U.S. company gathers steam in Congress. TikTok brings dozens of its creators to Washington to tell lawmakers to back off, while emphasizing changes the company has made to protect user data. TikTok also annoys legislators by sending notifications to users urging them to “speak up now” or risk seeing TikTok banned; users then flood congressional offices with calls.
The House of Representatives passes the TikTok ban-or-sell bill.
The Senate follows suit, sending the bill to President Biden, who signs it.
FILE - A TikTok sign is displayed on their building in Culver City, Calif., March 11, 2024. If it feels like TikTok has been around forever, that's probably because it has, at least if you're measuring via internet time. What's now in question is whether it will be around much longer — and if so, in what form. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — It was Donald Trump who bestowed the “MAGA Mike Johnson” nickname on the House speaker the day he won the gavel.
It is the Republican speaker himself who is proving whether it sticks.
Johnson survived an ouster vote this week by one of Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress, far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, his job secured only after House Democrats turned out in force to put an end to the GOP chaos, for now.
But the oversized role Trump played in propping up Johnson cannot be understated — or relied upon to save the speaker again.
In fact, the indicted former president who has been known to flip his friends into foes warned that while Republicans shouldn’t be voting to remove Johnson, “At some point, we may very well be, but this is not the time.”
The outcome puts on display the fragility of the unexpected but strategically beneficial alliance that Trump and Johnson have formed ahead of the November election when both hope to be returned to power — the Republican president in the White House and the loyal foot soldier in Congress.
“Seems like they’re on the same page, and I think that’s great,” said lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who was a key figure in Trump's efforts to challenge the 2020 election.
Johnson has worked diligently to align himself with the former president, the conservative Christian setting aside his once critical views of the presidential contender to present himself as a chief implementer of the Trump Republican Party’s Make America Great Again agenda on Capitol Hill.
Barely six months on the job, since Johnson replaced the ousted then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the new leader has dashed multiple times to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, securing crucial support, including at a glitzy Republican National Committee gala this past weekend.
When Trump invited Johnson to the stage to say a few words, the speaker praised the former president as the “strongman” the country needs in the White House. Trump and Johnson are cordial, according to a person with knowledge of their relationship, and granted anonymity to discuss it.
“He’s doing a great job,” Trump said alongside Johnson after another visit last month, ahead of the House vote to approve a national security package with Ukraine funding that Greene warned would lead to a vote on Johnson's ouster.
In return for his seal of approval, Trump is increasingly able to rely on the speaker’s high-profile standing to legitimize his relentless attacks on the U.S. election process, the judicial system and the multiple criminal cases against him, including the federal indictment for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
“All these cases need to be dropped,” says Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, who as the House speaker is second in the line of presidential succession. “President Trump has done nothing wrong. ... It has to stop.”
Trump is already pre-emptively contesting the 2024 election as potentially rigged before the first ballots are cast, and Johnson, who helped lead legal challenges to Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, is in a powerful position to again question the legitimacy of the outcome.
Asked this week if he believed the 2020 election was legitimate and if he would stand by the new state-certified results this fall, Johnson shook his head in frustration, and demurred. “What we're talking about today is the 2024 election, nobody can go back and relitigate what happened in 2020,” he said.
The joint venture between Trump and Johnson was in clear focus Wednesday ahead of the House action when the speaker, flanked on the Capitol steps by a who’s who of the former president’s advisers, announced new legislation that would require proof of citizenship before Americans are eligible to vote.
Johnson had promised Trump a voting-citizenship bill during one of the Mar-a-Lago visits, and the unveiling of it alongside Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policies, and others showed just how embedded the former president’s Make America Great Again movement has become in the House speaker's agenda.
Election experts said there is scant evidence that non-citizens vote in U.S. elections, and past reviews including one pursued by the Trump administration have not produced significant cases of wrongdoing.
Nevertheless, Johnson and the others argued without proof that immigrants are being brought into the U.S. to illegally vote. The legislation can be seen as groundwork for the challenges Trump may pose in the aftermath of the November election.
“If this bill does not become law, then Joe Biden and Democrats will have engineered one of the greatest interferences in any democratic nation in the history of the world,” Miller said outside the Capitol.
Still, the legislative push did not placate Greene, who hours later tried and failed to remove the speaker from office.
Colleagues booed in protest. An overwhelming majority, 359-43, kept Johnson in his job, for now.
“I’m proud of what I did today,” Greene said afterward on the Capitol steps.
It’s the second time in a matter of months that Republicans have worked to oust their own speaker, an unheard of level of party upheaval with a move rarely seen in U.S. history.
Without Democratic help, Johnson would have certainly faced a more dismal outcome. All told, 196 and 163 Democrats voted to table Greene's motion. But 11 Republicans voted to proceed with the effort, more than it took to remove McCarthy last fall, a first in U.S. history.
Democrats have also made clear their help was for this moment alone, and not a promise of an enduring partnership for Johnson’s survival.
“Our decision to stop Marjorie Taylor Greene from plunging the country into further chaos is rooted in our commitment to solve problems,” said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., after the vote.
“The only thing we ask of our House Republican colleagues is for traditional Republicans to further isolate the extreme MAGA Republican wing of the GOP,” said Jeffries, who is in line to become speaker if Democrats win control of the House in the fall. “We need more common sense and less chaos.”
Asked about a future motion to vacate the speaker, Jeffries said, “Haven’t given it a thought.”
By relying on Democratic backing, Johnson risks inciting more criticism that he is insufficiently loyal to the party.
And the threat still lingers — any single lawmaker can call up the motion to vacate the speaker.
Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Michelle Price, Stephen Groves, Mary Clare Jalonick and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks to reporters about requiring American citizenship to vote in national elections, as they introduce the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., joined by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks to reporters after she tried and failed to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, her long-shot effort swiftly and resoundingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans tired of the political chaos, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., joined by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks to reporters after she tried and failed to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, her long-shot effort swiftly and resoundingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans tired of the political chaos, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., joined by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks to reporters after she tried and failed to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, her long-shot effort swiftly and resoundingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans tired of the political chaos, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., joined by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks to reporters after she tried and failed to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, her long-shot effort swiftly and resoundingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans tired of the political chaos, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., speaks to reporters after she tried and failed to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, her long-shot effort swiftly and resoundingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans tired of the political chaos, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., joined by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks to reporters after she tried and failed to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, her long-shot effort swiftly and resoundingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans tired of the political chaos, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., leaves a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, heads to a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. Rep. Good has criticized Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., for continuing her push to oust Speaker Mike Johnson from his position. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., leaves a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., whom she has vowed to remove from his leadership post, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., leaves a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., whom she has vowed to remove from his leadership post, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., joined by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks to reporters after she tried and failed to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, her long-shot effort swiftly and resoundingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans tired of the political chaos, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., speaks to reporters after she tried and failed to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, her long-shot effort swiftly and resoundingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans tired of the political chaos, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks during a news conference amid threats that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, is threatening to oust Johnson from his leadership post, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
