• by Colin Kirkland , January 7, 2025

Like Meta’s recent decision to discontinue fact-checking operations on its family of social media apps, TikTok is appealing to president-elect Donald Trump in order to safeguard its future in the U.S. 

Recently, Trump shared a TikTok-created graphic on his social media platform, Truth Social. The post  highlights the president-elect’s content performance on the ByteDance-owned app, showing how many millions of times Trump-related hashtags have been shared on the platform and how many more views on TikTok Trump-related content has received compared to Instagram.

For example, “8x more views total on TikTok vs IG” and “5x more views per post on TikTok vs IG.” 

Alongside his post, Trump wrote: “Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?” The question alludes to a highly debated law that could force ByteDance to sell TikTok to a stateside buyer or ban it from the U.S. entirely. 

Since winning the 2024 presidential election, Trump has publicly supported TikTok’s future in the U.S., officially asking the Supreme Court to temporarily halt the law and provide Trump time to negotiate a deal that would allow the app to remain live for its 170 million users in the region. 

Per the request, Trump’s attorneys stated that the president-elect “opposes banning TikTok in the United States” and “alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government.”

In showcasing Trump’s popularity on TikTok, the company is clearly hoping the president-elect will remain committed to helping ensure the app’s survival in the U.S. through potential executive action once he takes office. 

Despite seeking to force TikTok into a selloff during his first term as president in 2020, Trump’s potential to “save TikTok” from extinction in the U.S. would only help grow his support in the region, as millions of Americans use the app as their primary means of revenue, not to mention a major source of entertainment and social connection.