The TikTok divestment law
The United States orders a Chinese company to sell its most popular app or be banned.
- When
- Known to
- ± 12 hours
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Signed 24 April 2024, the law required ByteDance to divest TikTok's American operations. The app went dark for about fourteen hours in January 2025 before an extension, and the eventual restructuring left a US joint venture running the service. It was the first time the United States forced the sale of a major consumer platform on national security grounds, and the precedent cuts both ways.