We hope your withdrawal symptoms weren’t too bad — we hear Renegade dancing deprivation is no joke and we feel for you. 

After a brief blackout period from late Saturday into Sunday morning, TikTok began restoring services to US users yesterday, citing assurances to it and its service providers from the Trump 2.0 administration that the “TikTok Ban” bill will go unenforced. For now, at least. Scroll, scroll, scroll while you can, TikTok addicts — because the future of the app remains murky.

Scrolling: A Nationalized Pastime?

So what the heck is happening? On Friday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against TikTok — calling the sell-or-ban bill perfectly constitutional, and TikTok “went dark” late Saturday. Users who opened the app were greeted with a message saying the ban made services “temporarily unavailable.” The message was soon updated to say, “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.” The Biden administration, which said it wouldn’t enforce the ban on its final day in office, called the self-imposed blackout “a stunt” and critics say the whole thing looked as choreographed as anything you might find on the platform.

Technically under threat of devastating penalties that both the outgoing and incoming administrations promised not to enforce, Google and Apple removed TikTok from their respective app stores late Saturday. Oracle, TikTok’s primary US cloud computing provider, told staff to prepare to shut down TikTok’s servers, The Information reported. But by Sunday morning, the app started coming back online for its 170 million US users after Trump announced he’d promptly sign an executive order extending the deadline by 90 days following his inauguration today (where TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is receiving VIP treatment). It’s not exactly clear what happens next, but there seem to be concepts of a plan:

• “My initial thought is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the US gets a 50% ownership in a joint venture set up between the US and whichever purchase we so choose,” Trump wrote on his own social media platform, Truth Social, Sunday morning. Yes, the post indicates Trump would want the US government to own at least part of TikTok (OK, now the first amendment scholars are perking up).
• As for the rest of TikTok? Shark Tank star Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary says he’s offered $20 billion in cash for the app, Frank McCourt says he has an offer ready, CNBC reports AI startup Perplexity has submitted a merger bid with TikTok US, and key Trump ally and X owner Elon Musk likely remains in the running.

Of course, this still requires the cooperation of TikTok parent company ByteDance, a privately held company that says it is about 40% owned by its China-based founders and employees while global institutional investors such as Blackrock and General Atlantic own the other 60%. Trump has called TikTok a “spy app” in the past, and his incoming national security advisor Mike Waltz has indicated he agrees the platform represents a national security threat, since in theory the Chinese government can legally access data collected by ByteDance. 

Hall Monitors: Is any of this in accordance with the actual law? Many, including at least some prominent Republicans in Congress, seem to think not. House Speaker Mike Johnson said on NBC Sunday morning that “the law is very precise, and the only way to extend that is if there is an actual deal in the works.” A deal before the deadline.

The EU wants everyone to know it has no intention of genuflecting toward a new Trump administration and won’t stop doling out Big Tech fines. 

European regulators on Friday ordered X-née-Twitter to hand over documentation regarding recent changes to its recommendation algorithms. It’s part of an expanding probe into the company, and comes as the EU is trying to assure the world that it won’t go easy on Big Tech just because the new Trump administration is a touch friendlier with the tech industry than it was the last time around.

Fine With Me

Last week, an FT report claimed that the EU was planning to ease its foot off the “rein-in-Big-Tech pedal” by reassessing various ongoing probes into US tech companies, and one anonymous EU diplomat implied to the FT that Trump’s return to the White House was a factor. “It’s going to be a whole new ball game with these tech oligarchs so close to Trump and using that to pressurise us,” the diplomat said.

The EU pushed back against the report publicly. Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera told journalists there would be “no freezing, no reassessment” of probes ordered under the bloc’s wide-ranging Digital Markets Act:

• Ribera has taken the place of Margrethe Vestager, a commissioner who oversaw probes that led to multi-billion dollar fines of US tech companies, some of which are just starting to be enforced as tech companies exhaust the appeals process.
• The EU also sent its newly minted commissioner for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy to address the report. Commissioner Henna Virkkunen told CNBC on Thursday: “We are continuing the work, so there are not any new decisions made. So we are doing the investigations [to see] if they are complying with our rules.”

The EU’s expanded probe into X doesn’t just want to take a close look at its recommendation algorithms, but also the technical nuts and bolts that “allow direct fact-finding on content moderation and virality of accounts.”

Stiff Upper Lip: The EU isn’t the only US ally making a show about tech policy and sovereignty. Following Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that his platforms would change their moderation and fact-checking policies, UK tech minister Peter Kyle said in an interview with the Observer newspaper that the country won’t compromise around its own laws on user safety online. “The threshold for these laws allows responsible free speech to a very, very high degree […] But I just make this basic point: Access to British society and our economy is a privilege — it’s not a right. And none of our basic protections for children and vulnerable people are up for negotiation,” said Kyle.

Is the matador running from the bull market? Less than three months after pledging to have a full-service digital bank up and running in America by the end of 2025, Spain’s most valuable lender is reevaluating its business in the UK.

Santander is exploring a partial Brexit, the Financial Times reported Saturday, some 20 years after it Brentered the British market and kickstarted a multinational makeover.

Shifting Gears

Residents of the US Northeast — where Santander has over 400 branches offering retail accounts — and car owners — it’s the fifth-largest auto lender in the US — are most likely to be familiar with the Spanish bank’s American presence.

Car loans have proven a headache for Santander in the UK of late. The bank put aside £295 million ($358 million) in November to deal with potential exposure to an industry-wide court ruling that found it illegal for dealerships to take commissions from banks without customers’ informed consent.

Even before that ruling, Santander was cost-cutting in the UK, where its returns are lower than other markets, with a headcount reduction of 1,400 announced in October. The group has also been slimming the relative size of its UK business: Santander’s risk-weighted assets in Britain comprised 12.7% of the total in the first half of 2024, down from 14.3% in 2020. At the same time, it’s openly eyeing major US growth:

• Santander’s digital bank, Openbank, launched in the US in October with high-yield savings accounts. And by the end of 2025, Openbank — already the largest digital bank in Europe with €18.5 billion in deposits — is set to offer American customers a full suite of financial services including savings products and auto loans (the expansion is expected to contribute to funding for $30 billion in auto loans).
• No decision is imminent about Santander’s UK presence, the FT reported, and the bank is exploring several options. Even if it did pull the plug on its retail and commercial bank in the UK, it would maintain a corporate and investment banking presence in the important London financial hub.

The Carefully Worded Reply: “The UK is a core market for Santander, and this has not changed,” the bank told the FT in a statement, not directly addressing whether it is contemplating a change.