It’s rare for a journalist to be the bearer of good news. But that’s how it felt on Sunday when I was the first to tell 23-year-old TikToker George Kapitan that the beloved app was alive again, just 16 hours after a dramatic Saturday night shutdown.

“Okay,” George said. “I guess it works.”

Honestly, not the moment of jubilation I’d been expecting. George had told me thathe and his friends had held a farewell for the social network the night before. “I was really sad,” he said. “We got together, made dinner, had ice cream. A little going away party for TikTok.”

Maybe George’s calm reaction was because nothing about the app feels certain. Sure, it was loading now. But for how long? And under whose control? TikTokers now realize the fragility of their digital home and its status as a geopolitical football. Its existence still hangs in the balance despite the temporary reprieve put in place over the weekend.

George credited the app with aiding his burgeoning career in marketing, learning the ropes from how-to videos, trusted mentors and other content the algorithm learned he was looking for. He now works at L’Oreal SA.

But political leaders have long feared this kind of productive use covers the app’s potential as a vector for espionage and disruption by the Chinese Communist Party. For that reason, Sunday had been set as the deadline for parent company ByteDance to divest the app or face being cut off from the American market. And so it came to pass on Saturday night, not long before 11 p.m. Eastern Time: TikTok had gone dark, yanked from mobile app stores.

The controversial but decisive action was........

© Bloomberg