TikTok CEO meets with Trump as the platform tries to avoid a ban

TikTok’s ban is scheduled to go into effect just one day before Donald Trump’s inauguration.

by Emma Roth

Dec 16, 2024, 10:48 PM UTC

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

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Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to meet with President-Elect Donald Trump on Monday as the platform faces a ban in the US, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. The move makes Chew the latest tech executive — following Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — to meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

TikTok already lost in appeals court while fighting the ban-or-divest law that goes into effect on January 19th, and today, it asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

Though Trump initially led the ban on TikTok over claims about national security concerns, he started to reverse course earlier this year. In March, Trump said he didn’t want a TikTok ban because “...without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people.” He later joined TikTok in June.

When asked about the TikTok ban during a press conference on Monday, Trump said he would “take a look.” Along with meeting with Trump, tech giants, including Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI, have donated to Trump’s inauguration fund as well.

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