Southern Miss students are left with mixed emotions after hearing of President Donald Trump’s agreement with China to sell TikTok to American companies.
On September 15, U.S and Chinese officials announced that an agreement has been made to transfer TikTok to a U.S company. President Trump hinted on his Truth Social platform about the agreement.
“A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our country very much wanted to save,” said President Trump. “They will be very happy! I will be speaking to President Xi on Friday. The relationship remains a very strong one!!!"
Some are indeed very happy. Video Arts Junior Jeremiah Kentrail said that he is happy but not surprised by the outcome.
“I'm kind of happy that it's not getting banned,” said Kentrail. “But at the same time, I feel like that was always the plan for it not to get banned just because of how much news gets pushed through that platform. So, I mean, I'm not really feeling too strong in one way or the other because I kind of expected it from the beginning, but I mean, it's definitely something to look out for.”
However, other students were not pleased by the news of the agreement. Graduate student Tristan Roberson says he wants to use the app even less following the news.
“I think the inception of banning it in the first place was ridiculous,” said Roberson. “I think for a government that’s already been spying on its citizens to peddle some conspiracy, about China spying on its citizens when TikTok’s CEO is from Singapore is ridiculous in the first place. An American company buying the company or buying TikTok–or its usage in the U.S — all makes me more fearful that it will be used for the current administration. So I am less inclined to use it than I ever was.”
Kentrail said he is not as afraid of TikTok’s access to user information.
“I feel like, even though TikTok already has some odd amount of access to information,” said Kentrail. “I feel like they either will have that much more access, depending on who's sold to in the US or probably less access to it, depending on how they run the platform.”
This agreement comes after President Biden signed a bill that would ban or force TikTok to sell in March 2024. Throughout the rest of 2024, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance went back and forth with the U.S Supreme Court attempting to revoke the ban. At the end of 2024, President Trump, who had not been sworn in to office at this time, asked the Supreme Court to pause the app’s banning. However, on Jan. 18, 2025, the video app went dark for a few hours and was removed from most American app stores.
Since then, it has been returned to American app stores and has had its banning postponed several times by the Trump administration.
