TikTok’s Resurrection Sparks Legal Uncertainty for Global Brands

TikTok is again on-line after a half-day outage on Jan. 19, however its reinstatement has left global brands in authorized limbo.

As corporations reassess their TikTok methods, issues are mounting over whether or not U.S.-based entities can legally handle worldwide model accounts—creating contemporary uncertainty within the wake of the Supreme Court docket’s divest-or-ban regulation.

At promoting company Pereira O’Dell, the state of affairs represents “the most important, sudden flip” following the short-lived TikTok ban, stated Harriet Riley, the company’s social technique director.

“In 75 days or much less, if TikTok goes down, is a U.S. entity legally permitted to function a TikTok account for a world model?” Riley stated. Pereira O’Dell, which manages a number of world manufacturers, is taking a cautious strategy because it resumes posting for clients. “There’s an enormous investigation [underway] for our authorized staff to determine this out,” she added.

In the meantime, the authorized publicity of TikTok’s service suppliers stays murky.

President Trump signed a sequence of government orders on his first day in workplace, together with one directing the U.S. legal professional basic to pause enforcement of a federal regulation that criminalizes the internet hosting and distribution of TikTok for 75 days. The order additionally instructs the legal professional basic to guarantee service suppliers in writing that no violations have occurred and that they face no authorized legal responsibility—at the least till the extension expires.

Nevertheless,  legal experts warn that Trump’s directive presents little actual safety. Corporations that violate the regulation may face fines of as much as $5,000 per person—which, given TikTok’s 170 million U.S. customers, may quantity to a staggering $850 billion in penalties.

Suppliers “deliberately violating federal regulation,” wrote Matt Schettenhelm, Bloomberg Intelligence litigation and coverage analyst, on X, are “transferring your authorized publicity from $0 to $850 billion, on a promise from a president who flipped 180 on this very difficulty, and beneath statute of limitations that outlasts his presidency.”

Nonetheless, as Ray Brescia, professor at Albany Regulation Faculty, places it, it’s unlikely that these suppliers will threat such large legal responsibility, given the uncertainty round how and by whom the regulation is perhaps enforced.