Social media platforms play a crucial role in everything we do, and as investigators, we keep a close eye on news relating to these platforms. And as we all know, TikTok has been at the center of controversy for quite some time. Here is a general outline highlighting what we know about the TikTok ban, and its most recent halt according to Alison Durkee of Forbes:
There was a brief TikTok outage on Saturday, January 18, 2025 as a federal TikTok ban was upheld in the United States.
TikTok restored access to U.S. users on Sunday, January 19, 2025 in anticipation of an executive order from President Donald Trump (officially signed on Monday, January 20, 2025), which temporarily paused the ban in the United States for 75 days.
“Companies that handle TikTok’s U.S. user data, including Oracle and Akamai, restored access to the app in order to put it back online, according to NPR, but the app still has not yet been restored to Apple and Google’s app stores, meaning U.S. users cannot download or update TikTok,” states Durkee.
And for existing users who didn’t lose access to the app if it was still downloaded on their devices… “It’s still unclear if or when Apple and Google could put TikTok back on their app stores. If a circumstance arises in which Trump keeps the law on pause indefinitely and TikTok stays online but can’t be updated or downloaded, users will likely eventually stop being able to use TikTok, as the app will get increasingly obsolete without the ability to update it,” Durkee writes.
So…the question remains. Will ICU Investigations still be including TikTok in their Internet Profile Reports? The answer is YES, for as long as we possibly can!
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