WASHINGTON — The United States government’s ban on the social media platform TikTok has officially ended. Affecting around 170 million users of the app, the ban lasted just slightly longer than those users’ collective attention spans.
“I’m just so happy it’s back. I really didn’t know what –” said TikTok user Frank Hart before becoming distracted by a squirrel running up a tree. “Like I said, it’s just great it’s back and I don’t have to find something else to do while I’m watching a movie.” Hart continued after quickly losing interest in the squirrel.
Hart wasn’t the only TikTok user who was ecstatic about the news. Many of them rushed back to the app to make videos celebrating its return.
“That was the most agonizing period of my life,” recalled TikToker Jenna Geller in a video of her twerking in the middle of rush hour traffic on the freeway. “It was banned for so long I never would have believed it could come back. I mean those few hours were absolutely harrowing. I was so bored, there was nothing to do. I had to resort to reading a book, luckily when I took a break after the first paragraph to scroll Twitter I saw TikTok was back.”
Kenneth Hong, a spokesperson for ByteDance spoke about the process for getting the app back up for its American users.
“We understand how difficult this was for our users and we deeply apologize that they had to go several hours without being able to scroll through 30 second videos algorithmically designed to keep them docile. Luckily as soon as President Biden took his 12:30 nap we were able to distract incoming President Trump with dangling keys long enough to convince him that bringing our app back will be good for him. After all, people won’t be privy to the actions of a fascist oligarchy while they’re watching snippets of flossing teens and funny cats for 12 hours a day.”
At press time, in light of TikTok’s return Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta will be shortening the maximum length of Instagram Reels to 4 seconds.
