Trump’s message to “young people of Tiktok” and to generation Z: “You owe me tall”

Over the past five years, Tiktok’s ban has evolved on a bipartite basis. After Trump launched the idea during his first presidency, he became a law in 2024 signed by President Joe Biden, forcing Tiktok to sell his American operations or to face a ban. In recent weeks, Trump has announced an agreement, which is still pending, while organizing discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The American wing of Tiktok will be controlled by a consortium of billionaires aligned by Trump, including Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch and Michael Dell.

Trump Tiktok pivot

In a historical reversal, Trump, who once aggressively pushed to prohibit Tiktok, recently signed a decree allowing an American consortium to buy and restructure American application operations, which saves him to the ban. The agreement is considered to be a value of around $ 14 billion, much less than analysts say that US Tiktok operations are worth in an open auction. Trump’s claim to “save Tiktok” refers to his role in approving this agreement to maintain the platform alive in the United States, a decision which he now supervises as an important favor for the user basis of young people in the application.

This turnaround is a notable example of political adaptation, because Tiktok has become the dominant social media platform for users under 30, with around 170 million users, providing a vital communication channel for news, entertainment and political discourse. The initiates of Trump’s campaign recognized this strategic adoption, highlighting the role of the platform in the formation of young people’s opinion and the signaling of a new awareness-raising approach aimed at a generation that traditionally favored Democrats.

For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.