Last month, TikTok went offline for a few hours in the US after the deadline for the law that forced its ban in the country passed. The service was available again shortly after, but with lower levels of traffic. Now, a report reveals that TikTok’s traffic in the US is almost back to its pre-ban levels.
TikTok had lost up to 85% of its traffic in the US after the ban
After the app’s shutdown in the US, TikTok’s traffic levels dropped by up to 85%. Many users were trying out alternatives like RedNote, and some probably didn’t even notice at the time that the app was back up after just a few hours. Since then, TikTok has been regaining activity among its user base. The company revealed last year that TikTok has around 170 million active users in the US.
In a new development, Cloudflare Radar reports that TikTok is close to regaining its original pre-ban traffic levels. “DNS traffic for TikTok-related domains has continued to recover since service restoration, and is currently about 10% lower than the pre-shutdown level,” said David Belson, head of data insight at Cloudflare.
The app’s immediate shutdown on January 19 was not a requirement of the “anti-TikTok law.” However, the company enforced it out of concern for potential sanctions against its partners. Donald Trump’s direct involvement helped the app to be back up and running in the US about 12 hours after it was shut down. The US president signed an executive order extending the original deadline by 75 days. Additionally, the new Washington administration assured TikTok that its partners would not face sanctions.
ByteDance has yet to sell the app
That said, Trump has not gotten rid of the requirement that ByteDance divest its US stake in TikTok. He even proposed a 50% sale of the app as a potential solution that could leave everyone happy. ByteDance has always been reluctant to sell its app, preferring to be banned from the US instead. But keeping a 50% stake could allow them to continue to have a significant presence in the management of the service. It could also allow US officials to monitor that no user data is stolen by China.
Multiple US entrepreneurs and big tech companies are in talks to bid for TikTok. Trump confirmed that Microsoft is on the list but also expects a bidding war. A group backed by YouTuber Mr. Beast will offer more than $20 billion to take partial ownership of the app. Project Liberty emerged weeks ago as another potential candidate. Perplexity, Oracle, or Elon Musk himself could also buy the app (in whole or in part). Wedbush analyst Dan Ives estimates TikTok’s value at around $40-50 billion.
