TikTok’s traffic bounces back despite being pulled off app stores, fears of shutdown

TikTok has nearly bounced back to its original traffic levels after usage fell 85% when the app temporarily shut down earlier this month, according to Cloudflare Radar.

“DNS traffic for TikTok-related domains has continued to recover since service restoration, and is currently about 10% lower than pre-shutdown level,” David Belson, head of data insight at Cloudflare, told CNBC in a statement.

DNS, short for Domain Name System, converts website names into IP addresses that browsers use to access internet resources. Cloudflare Radar is the connectivity cloud company’s hub that displays internet trends and insights with DNS to monitor global internet traffic. 

TikTok briefly shutdown in the U.S. following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a law signed by former President Joe Biden in April. That legislation required China-based ByteDance to either divest its ownership of TikTok or have the app face an effective ban in the U.S. on Jan. 19. Consequently, Apple and Google removed TikTok from their U.S. app stores to comply with the law. 

The app came back online after President Donald Trump said he would postpone enforcement of the ban, signing an executive order on his first day in office to extend the law’s deadline by an additional 75 days to April 5.

In the meantime, U.S. investors from Frank McCourt to Jimmy Donaldson, known as Mr. Beast, have offered to do deals that would bring ownership of TikTok to the U.S. Trump has also expressed interest in billionaire Elon Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX and owns X, or Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison obtaining partial ownership of the app.

The data from Cloudflare shows that, for the most part, TikTok has managed to maintain the bulk of its users and creators in the U.S. despite going offline for about 14 hours and remaining off of the Apple or Google app stores. 

As for its alternatives, Cloudflare’s data shows a spike in traffic the day of the temporary ban, with levels remaining steadily higher in the following week. Traffic for alternatives began to grow a week ahead of the expected shutdown, driven by the increased popularity of RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, Belson said.

But traffic to TikTok alternatives peaked on Jan. 19, the day TikTok returned online, he added.

“DNS traffic fell rapidly once the shutdown ended, and has continued to slowly decline over the last week and a half,” Belson said.

With TikTok’s long-term future in the U.S. still uncertain, many creators are expanding their online presence to other platforms.

“I’ve kind of made peace with it going away,” said Dylan Lemay, a creator with more than 10 million followers on TikTok. “When they threatened to get rid of it the first time, that was my wake-up call to say I need to make sure that I’m prepared if this ever does happen.”

Trump first threatened to ban TikTok during his first go as president in 2020. Since then, Lemay has been putting efforts into building his followings on other platforms to protect his career as a full-time creator if TikTok is ever officially banned. 

Lemay said he has found audiences on other platforms. YouTube is where he is now making his most consistent earnings. Currently, he has more than 5.6 million subscribers on YouTube, where he posts long- and short-form videos that have amassed billions of views.

“If the worst comes to worst and TikTok goes away, I have this solid foundation with a company like Google,” Lemay said. “That’s not going anywhere.”

While some successful TikTok creators have been able to find audiences on YouTube Shorts and Meta’s Instagram Reels, many have discovered that their TikTok content doesn’t translate as well to other platforms. 

Noah Glenn Carter, another creator with nearly 10 million TikTok followers, has not been able to find the same kind of audience on Instagram and YouTube, where his following and viewership are significantly lower.

In the weeks leading up to the ban, Carter contacted companies he’s previously worked with on brand deals, which are agreements where brands pay creators to promote their products and services on social media. With TikTok’s future in limbo, brands are pausing or altering their agreements to include competing platforms, Carter and other creators and managers told CNBC.

In the meantime, Meta has begun offering creators deals to promote Instagram on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat and other services, CNBC reported earlier this month.

“I don’t know if I can really keep the same rates with my biggest platform going dark,” said Carter.

Other creators say they refuse to believe TikTok will ever truly get banned. 

“I’m going to believe it when I see it in those 75 days,” said Michael DiCostanzo, a creator with more than 2.3 million followers on TikTok.

DiCostanzo posts his content to competing short-form video platforms, but he said other apps have yet to build the kind of environment that brought him and others success on TikTok. 

“I don’t know if YouTube Shorts or Reels can ever actually replicate that sense of community,” said DiCostanzo. “If TikTok were to completely shut down, I don’t think they would get that big of a boost.”