Millions of TikTok users in the United States are no longer able to watch videos on the social media platform as a federal ban on the immensely popular app takes effect.
The company’s app was removed from prominent app stores, including the ones operated by Apple and Google, on Saturday evening, while its website told users that the short-form video platform was no longer available. The blackout began on Saturday evening, just hours before the law took effect.
When users opened the TikTok app on Saturday, they encountered a pop-up message that said “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now” and prevented them from scrolling on videos.
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US,” the message said. “Unfortunately that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” the message continued, in reference to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to “save” the platform. The company told its users to stay tuned.
The only option the message gives to US users is to close the app, or click another option that leads them to the platform’s website. There, users are shown the same message and given the option to download their data, an option TikTok previously said may take days to process.
Before that announcement went out, TikTok had said in another message to users that its service would be “temporarily unavailable” and told them its working to restore its US service “as soon as possible.” But how long the platform will remain dark is unclear.
In an interview with NBC News on Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump said he was thinking about giving TikTok a 90-day extension that would allow them to continue operating. If such an extension happens, Trump – who once favored a TikTok ban – said it would “probably” be announced Monday, the day that he is sworn in as president. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration with a prime seating location.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long raised concerns about the app, which they see as a national security threat due to its Chinese ownership. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a technology company based in Beijing that operates the well-known video editing app CapCut and Lemon8 – both of which were also unavailable for service Saturday evening.
The federal law required ByteDance to cut ties with TikTok by Sunday or face a nationwide ban. The statute was passed by Congress in April after it was included as part of a high-priority $95 billion package that provided foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel. President Joe Biden quickly signed it, and then the law was quickly sued by TikTok and ByteDance on First Amendment grounds.
While defending the law in court, the Biden administration argued it was concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of US user data that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion.
Officials have also warned the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect. But to date, the US has not publicly provided evidence of TikTok handing user data to Chinese authorities or tinkering with its algorithm to benefit Chinese interests.
The Supreme Court unanimously decided on Friday the risk to national security posed by TikTok’s ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States.
After TikTok’s service started going dark, some in China slammed the US and accused it of suppressing the popular app. In a post on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, Hu Xijin, a former editor-in-chief for the Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper Global Times, said “TikTok’s announcement to halt services in America marks the darkest moment in the development of internet.”
“A country that claims to have the most freedom of speech has carried out the most brutal suppression of an internet application,” said Hu, who is now a political commentator. TikTok does not operate in China, where ByteDance instead offers Douyin, the Chinese sibling of TikTok that follows Beijing’s strict censorship rules.
After the court ruling, both White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco had said that the Biden administration would leave the law’s implementation to President-elect Donald Trump given that his inauguration falls the day after the ban takes effect.
But TikTok said after the court ruling on Friday that it “will be forced to go dark” if the administration didn’t provide a “definitive statement” to the companies, such as Apple, Google and Oracle, that deliver its service in the US
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had called TikTok’s demand a “stunt” and said there was no reason for TikTok or other companies “to take actions in the next few days before the Trump administration takes office.” But despite those statements from the administration, confusion lingered about what would happen until TikTok began blocking its service.
Under the law, mobile app stores are barred from offering TikTok and internet hosting services are prohibited from delivering the service to American users. Violations could incur fines of up to $5,000 for each user who continues to access TikTok, meaning penalties the companies could face if they continue offering TikTok could total to a large sum.
As its written, experts said the law does not require TikTok to take down its platform, so its unclear if the company voluntarily shut it down or was unable to continue the service alive after losing access support from its tech providers. The company did not respond to questions sent this week about its plans.
The statue allows the sitting president to extend the deadline by 90 days if a sale is in progress. But no clear buyers have emerged, and ByteDance has previously said it won’t sell TikTok.
On Saturday, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok US business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perplexity is not asking to purchase the ByteDance algorithm that feeds TikTok user’s videos based on their interests and has made the platform such a phenomenon.
Other investors have also been eyeing TikTok. “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary recently said a consortium of investors that he and billionaire Frank McCourt put together offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash. Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said last year that he was putting together an investor group to buy TikTok.
Associated Press
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