Many tech leaders and tech companies have paid court to President-elect Donald J. Trump in recent weeks. From Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, they have visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, flattered him on X and donated to his inaugural fund.
But TikTok has taken those methods to the next level.
As the Chinese-owned social app fights a federal law that bans it in the United States unless it is sold, it publicly referenced and then thanked Mr. Trump for his support in statements and in videos since Friday. It even built its flattery right into the app so its 170 million American users could see it:
“As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!,” a pop-up message on Sunday read.
TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Chew, filmed his own thank you video to Mr. Trump last week, even referring to the president’s personal TikTok account. Mr. Chew has also visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and has been invited to sit in a position of honor on the dais at Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
TikTok “will go to any lengths to please the authorities” while facing this ban, said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University and an expert on the global regulation of new technologies.
“TikTok is seeking the president’s favor in these ways because their very existence in this country depends on him,” Mr. Chander said in an interview on Sunday. “He’s their lifeline and so they are making sure that they stay on his good side.”
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Trump may not be able to save the app in the long-term as he has declared. He vowed early Sunday to issue an executive order to give ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, more time to make a sale that would satisfy the law, but it’s not clear if he can extend the timeline now that the law has taken effect — or if he has a sale in mind that would meet the terms of the law. Mr. Trump appears to be committed. Even before his post promising an executive order, he posted to the social media platform Truth Social in all-caps: “SAVE TIKTOK!”
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