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By the time President Trump returned to office earlier this year, TikTok’s fate should have been sealed. Congress had passed, and President Biden had signed, a law requiring the app to be banned or sold by the day before Inauguration Day. But Trump announced he would effectively pause the law. Instead, he said he would "save" the app by brokering a belated sale. Now, Trump’s attempt to make that sale has taken shape: Last week, the White House announced a plan for TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to license a copy of the app's algorithm to a consortium of investors, at least some of whom have been vocal supporters of Trump’s political agenda. If the plan is finalized, TikTok’s US business will fall into the hands of powerful Trump allies at a moment of unprecedented media consolidation. But that transition, if it happens, will challenge the culture that defined TikTok in its early days. This excerpt from my book, Every Screen On the Planet: The War Over TikTok, traces one of the company’s first and most prominent run-ins with Trump: an attempt by a group of young K-Pop stan TikTokkers to prank the president and tank attendance at one of his campaign rallies. At the time, the stunt was largely dismissed as funny—but it also revealed how TikTok, and the people using it, could shape our politics in the years to come. Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-tiktok-ban-trump-kpop-stans/