SAN FRANCISCO — If it feels like TikTok has been around forever, that’s probably because it has, at least if you’re measuring via internet time. What’s now in question is whether it will be around much longer and, if so, in what form?

Starting in 2017, when the Chinese social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has grown from a niche teen app into a global trendsetter. While, of course, also emerging as a potential national security threat, according to U.S. officials.

On April 24, President Joe Biden signed legislation requiring TikTok parent ByteDance to sell to a U.S. owner within a year or to shut down. TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, filed a lawsuit against the U.S., claiming the security concerns were overblown and the law should be struck down because it violates the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok, and the popular short form video service went dark in the U.S. — just hours before the ban was set to begin.

Here’s how TikTok came to this juncture:

ByteDance is founded in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first hit product is Toutiao, a personalized news aggregator for Chinese users.

Startup Musical.ly, later known for an eponymous app used to post short lipsyncing music videos, is founded in China by entrepreneur Alex Zhu.

Musical.ly hits #1 in the Apple App Store, following a design change that made the company’s logo visible when users shared their videos.

ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese users. Its popularity inspires the company to spin off a version for foreign audiences called TikTok.

ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. Nine months later, ByteDance merges it with TikTok.

Powered by an algorithm that encourages binge-watching, users begin to share a wide variety of video on the app, including dance moves, kitchen food preparation and various “challenges” to perform, record and post acts that range from serious to satirical.

Rapper Lil Nas X releases the country-trap song “Old Town Road” on TikTok, where it goes viral and pushes the song to a record 17 weeks in the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The phenomenon kicks off a wave of TikTok videos from musical artists who suddenly see TikTok as a critical way to reach fans.

TikTok settles federal charges of violating U.S. child-privacy laws and agrees to pay a $5.7 million fine.

The Washington Post reports that while images of Hong Kong democracy protests and police crackdowns are common on most social media sites, they are strangely absent on TikTok. The same story notes that TikTok posts with the #trump2020 tag received more than 70 million views.

The company insists that TikTok content moderation, conducted in the U.S., is not responsible and says the app is a place for entertainment, not politics.

The Guardian reports on internal documents that reportedly detail how TikTok instructs its moderators to delete or limit the reach of videos touching on topics sensitive to China such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent massacre, Tibetan independence or the sanctioned religious group Falun Gong.

U.S. politicians begin to raise alarms about TikTok’s influence, calling for a federal investigations of its Musical.ly acquisition and a national security probe into TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps. That investigation begins in November, according to news reports.

The Pentagon recommends that all U.S. military personnel delete TikTok from all phones, personal and government-issued. Some services ban the app on military owned phones. In January, the Pentagon bans the app from all military phones.

TikTok becomes the second-most downloaded app in the world, according to data from analytics firm SensorTower.

Privacy groups file a complaint alleging TikTok is still violating U.S. child-protection laws and flouting a 2019 settlement agreement. The company “takes the issue of safely seriously” and continues to improve safeguards, it says.

TikTok hires former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive officer in an apparent attempt to improve its U.S. relations. Mayer resigns three months later.

India bans TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps in response to a border clash with China.

President Donald Trump says he is considering banning TikTok as retaliation for China’s alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump issues a sweeping but vague executive order banning American companies from any “transaction” with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, including TikTok. Several days later, he issues a second order demanding that ByteDance divest itself of TikTok’s U.S. operations within 90 days.

Microsoft confirms it is exploring acquisition of TikTok. The deal never materializes; neither does a similar overture from Oracle and Walmart. TikTok, meanwhile, sues the Trump administration for alleged violation of due process in its executive orders.

Joe Biden is elected president. He doesn’t offer new policy on TikTok and won’t take office until January, but Trump’s plans to force a sale of TikTok start to unravel anyway. The Trump administration extends the deadlines it had imposed on ByteDance and TikTok and eventually lets them slide altogether.

Newly sworn-in President Joe Biden postpones the legal cases involving Trump’s plan to ban TikTok, effectively bringing them to a halt.

TikTok announces it has more than a billion monthly active users.

A Wall Street Journal report finds TikTok algorithms can flood teens with a torrent of harmful material such as videos recommending extreme dieting, a form of eating disorder.

TikTok announces new rules to deter the spread of harmful material such as viral hoaxes and promotion of eating disorders.

“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a project created by two fans of the Netflix show as a TikTok project, wins the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.

TikTok becomes the most downloaded app in the world, beating out Instagram, according to SensorTower data.

BuzzFeed reports that China-based ByteDance employees have repeatedly accessed the nonpublic information of TikTok users, based on leaked recordings from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings. TikTok responds with a vague comment touting its commitment to security that doesn’t directly address the BuzzFeed report.

TikTok also announces it has migrated its user data to U.S. servers managed by the U.S. tech firm Oracle. But that doesn’t prevent fresh alarm among U.S. officials about the risk of Chinese authorities accessing U.S. user data.

FBI Director Christopher Wray raises national security concerns about TikTok, warning that Chinese officials could manipulate the app’s recommendation algorithm for influence operations.

ByteDance also said it fired four employees who accessed data on journalists from Buzzfeed News and The Financial Times while attempting to track down leaks of confidential materials about the company.

The White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure TikTok is deleted from all government-issued mobile devices. Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warn that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with China’s authoritarian government.

Legislators grill TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at a six-hour congressional hearing where Chew, a native of Singapore, attempts to push back on assertions that TikTok and ByteDance are tools of the Chinese government.

TikTok said it was restricting a tool some researchers use to analyze popular videos on the platform.

A bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to a U.S. company gathers steam in Congress. TikTok brings dozens of its creators to Washington to tell lawmakers to back off, while emphasizing changes the company has made to protect user data. TikTok also annoys legislators by sending notifications to users urging them to “speak up now” or risk seeing TikTok banned; users then flood congressional offices with calls.

The House of Representatives passes the TikTok ban-or-sell bill.

The Senate follows suit, sending the bill to President Biden, who signs it.

TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance sue the U.S. federal government to challenge a law that would force the sale of ByteDance’s stake or face a ban, saying that the law is unconstitutional.

Former President Donald Trump joins TikTok and begins posting campaign-related content.

Vice President Kamala Harris joins TikTok and also begins posting campaign-related material.

A federal appeals court panel unanimously upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S. The panel of judges rebuffed the company’s challenge of the statute, which it argued had ran afoul of the First Amendment.

President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning unless it’s sold by its China-based parent company, holding that the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app. A ban is set to into effect on Jan. 19, 2025.

TikTok users in the United States were prevented from watching videos on the popular social media platform just hours before a federal ban was set to take effect.

“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.,” a message in the app said. “Unfortunately that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”

The company’s app was also removed from prominent app stores, including the ones operated by Apple and Google, while its website told users that the short-form video platform was no longer available.

BANGKOK — China has slammed a decision by the U.S. Treasury to sanction a Beijing-based cybersecurity company for its alleged role in multiple hacking incidents targeting critical U.S. infrastructure.

Asked about the sanctions against Beijing-based Integrity Technology Group, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the country has cracked down on cyber attacks and that Washington was using the issue to “defame and smear China.”

“For some time now, the U.S. side has been playing up so-called Chinese cyber attacks and has even initiated illegal unilateral sanctions against China,” said Guo Jiakun, a ministry spokesperson. “China firmly opposes this and will take necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”

Integrity Technology Group said the move by Washington had “no factual basis.”

“The company firmly opposes the U.S. Treasury Department’s unwarranted accusations and Illegal unilateral sanctions on the company,” the company, also known as Yongxin Zhicheng Technology Group, said in a statement Monday to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

On Friday, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control hit Integrity Technology with sanctions that block access to U.S. property and bank accounts and prevent the targeted people and companies from doing business with Americans. It cited alleged multiple hacks against U.S. victims, including incidents attributed to Flax Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored campaign that targets U.S. critical infrastructure.

The sanctions did not appear to be related to an incident in which the Treasury Department reported that Chinese hackers had remotely accessed several of its workstations and unclassified documents in a major breach of cybersecurity.

The Treasury Department said it learned of that problem on Dec. 8, when a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, flagged that hackers had stolen a key “used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support” to workers.

U.S. officials are grappling with the fallout from a massive Chinese cyberespionage blitz known as Salt Typhoon that they say gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans.

Late last month, officials said at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by Salt Typhoon.

Integrity Technology said the sanctions would not adversely affect its business since it does not operate in the U.S. and has no assets there. It added that it abides by all laws and regulations and that it “has always adhered to the corporate vision and mission of bringing a sense of security to the world.”

WASHINGTON — A ninth U.S. telecoms firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said Friday.

Biden administration officials said this month that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon.

But Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, told reporters Friday that a ninth victim had been identified after the administration released guidance to companies about how to hunt for Chinese culprits in their networks.

The update from Neuberger is the latest development in a massive hacking operation that has alarmed national security officials, exposed cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the private sector and laid bare China’s hacking sophistication.

The hackers compromised the networks of telecommunications companies to obtain customer call records and gain access to the private communications of “a limited number of individuals.” Though the FBI has not publicly identified any of the victims, officials believe senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures are among those whose whose communications were accessed.

Neuberger said officials did not yet have a precise sense how many Americans overall were affected by Salt Typhoon, in part because the Chinese were careful about their techniques, but a “large number” were in the Washington-Virginia area.

Officials believe the goal of the hackers was to identify who owned the phones and, if they were “government targets of interest,” spy on their texts and phone calls, she said.

The FBI said most of the people targeted by the hackers are “primarily involved in government or political activity.”

Neuberger said the episode highlighted the need for required cybersecurity practices in the telecommunications industry, something the Federal Communications Commission is to take up at a meeting next month.

“We know that voluntary cyber security practices are inadequate to protect against China, Russia and Iran hacking of our critical infrastructure,” she said.

The Chinese government has denied responsibility for the hacking.

A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few short months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok’s challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform.

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”

TikTok and ByteDance — another plaintiff in the lawsuit — are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term and whose Justice Department would have to enforce the law, said during the presidential campaign that he is now against a TikTok ban and would work to “save” the social media platform.

The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, culminated a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.

The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.

However, a significant portion of the government’s information in the case has been redacted and hidden from the public as well as the two companies.

TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the U.S. hasn’t provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing’s benefit in the U.S. They have also argued the law is predicated on future risks, which the Department of Justice has emphasized pointing in part to unspecified action it claims the two companies have taken in the past due to demands from the Chinese government.

Friday’s ruling came after the appeals court panel heard oral arguments in September.

Some legal experts said at the time that it was challenging to read the tea leaves on how the judges would rule.

In a court hearing that lasted more than two hours, the panel – composed of two Republican and one Democrat appointed judges – appeared to grapple with how TikTok’s foreign ownership affects its rights under the Constitution and how far the government could go to curtail potential influence from abroad on a foreign-owned platform.

The judges pressed Daniel Tenny, a Department of Justice attorney, on the implications the case could have on the First Amendment. But they also expressed some skepticism at TikTok’s arguments, challenging the company’s attorney – Andrew Pincus – on whether any First Amendment rights preclude the government from curtailing a powerful company subject to the laws and influence of a foreign adversary.

In parts of their questions about TikTok’s ownership, the judges cited wartime precedent that allows the U.S. to restrict foreign ownership of broadcast licenses and asked if the arguments presented by TikTok would apply if the U.S. was engaged in war.

To assuage concerns about the company’s owners, TikTok says it has invested more than $2 billion to bolster protections around U.S. user data.

The company also argues the government’s broader concerns could have been resolved in a draft agreement it provided the Biden administration more than two years ago during talks between the two sides. It has blamed the government for walking away from further negotiations on the agreement, which the Justice Department argues is insufficient.

Attorneys for the two companies have claimed it’s impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically. They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm – the platform’s secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan – would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content.

Still, some investors, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire Frank McCourt, have expressed interest in purchasing the platform. Both men said earlier this year that they were launching a consortium to purchase TikTok’s U.S. business.

This week, a spokesperson for McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative, which aims to protect online privacy, said unnamed participants in their bid have made informal commitments of more than $20 billion in capital.

TikTok’s lawsuit was consolidated with a second legal challenge brought by several content creators — for which the company is covering legal costs — as well as a third one filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a nonprofit called BASED Politics Inc.

If TikTok appeals and the courts continue to uphold the law, it would fall on Trump’s Justice Department to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. The penalties would apply to app stores that would be prohibited from offering TikTok, and internet hosting services that would be barred from supporting it.