Justice Department Ends Unjust Ban on TikTok, Recognizing Workers’ Rights After Corporate Restructuring
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
The Department of Justice has finally acknowledged that the U.S.-controlled version of TikTok does not threaten national security, reversing a ban that restricted federal employees’ access to a popular platform. This decision follows a forced restructuring that prioritized U.S. corporate interests and investor control.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has issued a memorandum admitting that the American-controlled TikTok joint venture no longer presents the so-called national security concerns that justified the 2022 ban on federal workers. The opinion, addressed to the deputy counsel to the president, affirms that employees of executive-branch agencies may now download TikTok on official devices, subject to agency policies. This move restores access to a platform that connects millions, after years of xenophobic fearmongering and overreach under the guise of security.
The memo comes after the January 2024 divestiture, in which ByteDance was compelled to transfer control of TikTok’s U.S. user data and operations to TikTok U.S. Data Security (TikTok USDS), a joint venture now dominated by U.S. and global investors with an 80.1% stake, leaving ByteDance with a mere 19.9% minority share. The Department of Justice itself admitted that this minority ownership is irrelevant to security, exposing the political motivations behind the previous ban.
This restructuring was the result of aggressive legislation signed in April 2024, which forced ByteDance to sell its U.S. TikTok operations or face erasure from U.S. app stores—a clear example of state intervention to serve corporate interests. The law was upheld by the Supreme Court in January 2025, despite concerns about freedom of expression and digital rights. Under this new ownership, TikTok USDS will store U.S. user data in Oracle’s cloud and retrain its recommendation algorithm using only U.S. data, further entrenching U.S. tech giants’ dominance.
Now, federal agencies will individually decide whether to permit the app on government devices, following their own workplace policies. This reversal is a small victory for workers’ rights and digital freedom, but it comes at the cost of increased corporate consolidation and ongoing surveillance.