For a few hours on Friday, it looked like any Trump administration ban of TikTok was going to be pre-empted by companies. But Amazon’s startling reversal of its ban on TikTok—it said a Friday morning email to employees ordering the app to be deleted from their phones had been sent “in error”—made that thought moot.
As we reported earlier, we checked in with a slew of other companies and found only one—Wells Fargo—that acknowledged having banned TikTok. Amazon’s reversal raises a couple of questions, though. Did Amazon briefly think about currying favor with Republicans at what would be an opportune time, and then reconsider? (Seems unlikely.) Or did TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance find a way to pressure Amazon to reverse its decision? That seems possible. As our story noted, the two companies do business together.
