TikTok has gone through a chaotic whirlwind over the last few days.

The app was briefly banned in the U.S. as of Sunday, but is now back online after President Donald Trump took office and vowed to sign an executive order allowing it to function in the country. The 170 million Americans who were on the platform, for a short time, were no longer able to get on the addictive app and scroll through miles of video footage of strangers, influencers, cringe-inducing dances, and the variant menu of other brain-rotting footage.

President Donald Trump has said he will roll the ban back and allow the company more time to re-negotiate a deal. TikTok was ordered to sell off to an American-owned company, but since they couldn’t find a buyer, had to submit to the demands of the ban. That is, until Trump took office today.

Lawmakers, as well as the Supreme Court, approved of the ban due to concerns over national security, since TikTok is owned by the Chinese corporation ByteDance. Since the ban, millions of TikTok users have flocked to another Chinese app called “RedNote.”

Trump has garnered support from an unlikely case of tech giants, such as Elon Musk, and even Mark Zuckerberg, whose Meta censored the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, is switching gears to be more friendly toward free speech. Zuckerberg appeared on the popular Joe Rogan podcast and explained how much pressure Facebook was under to suppress certain voices on the platform.

The next four years are bound to be interesting to follow as Big Tech warms up to Trump and the discussions of TikTok’s ill effects on mental health continue to rage. TikTok is algorithmically sophisticated, and while it provides the livelihood for some digital influencers, has been shown to be a detriment to mental development and wellbeing. The app is designed to be powerfully addictive, with the short-form videos curating themselves for viewers to constantly consume. National security is one concern. Brain rot is another.