The TikTok brand is screened on a cell phone with U.S. flag within the background for illustration photograph in Krakow, Poland, on Jan. 17.
Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto through Getty Photographs
cover caption
toggle caption
Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto through Getty Photographs
TikTok is not accessible to customers within the U.S., the results of a controversial regulation forcing the favored platform offline until it splits away from its China-based proprietor, ByteDance.
When customers tried to open the app round 10:35 p.m. ET, a message appeared: “Sorry, TikTok is not obtainable proper now,” it learn. “A regulation banning TikTok has been enacted within the U.S. Sadly, which means you possibly can’t use TikTok for now.”
The message then mentioned President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “work with us on an answer to reinstate TikTok as soon as he takes workplace. Please keep tuned!”
Across the identical time, TikTok additionally stopped showing on the Apple and Google Play app shops, stopping the app to be downloaded and chopping the app from from essential software program updates.
It represents the primary time in historical past the U.S. authorities has outlawed a broadly fashionable social media community.
The pop-up message thousands and thousands of customers throughout the U.S. acquired after they tried to open TikTok on Saturday evening, hours earlier than a ban regulation was set to take impact.
Bobby Allyn/NPR
cover caption
toggle caption
Bobby Allyn/NPR
The TikTok ban may very well be quick lived, nevertheless. Trump said Saturday he’ll “almost definitely” give the app a 90-day reprieve as soon as he assumes workplace on Monday.
Such an extension is allowed below the regulation, although it does require a legally binding certification to Congress that steps towards divesting from ByteDance are in movement.
The regulation, recently upheld by the Supreme Courtroom, directed Apple and Google to take away the service from app shops. It additionally required web-hosting corporations, together with TikTok’s back-end cloud supplier, Oracle, to cease supporting the app or face penalties that would attain into the billions of {dollars}.
It stays to be seen how lengthy the service will stay offline, however the improvement has drawn criticism from free speech advocates, who mentioned it quantities to the sort of authorities censorship America typically condemns on the worldwide stage.
Free-speech group PEN America attacked the Supreme Courtroom’s resolution. “Proscribing entry to overseas media is a trademark of repressive governments, and we must always all the time be cautious when nationwide safety is invoked to silence speech,” the advocacy group mentioned in an announcement on Friday.
The prospect of a TikTok shutdown within the U.S. has been mentioned for greater than 4 years, but it surely typically has been stymied by courts or dissolved amid political bickering.
In April 2024, nevertheless, Congress passed a ban with overwhelming bipartisan help. Lawmakers worry TikTok’s proprietor ByteDance may very well be manipulated by the Chinese language authorities — exposing Individuals’ information and content material feeds to the whims of an adversarial regime.
Earlier this month, TikTok argued earlier than the Supreme Courtroom that the regulation represents an unprecedented suppression of free speech. But the Supreme Courtroom dominated in an unsigned unanimous resolution that “divestiture is critical” to resolve lawmakers’ fears about China. Due to this fact, the courtroom dominated, Congress acted lawfully when it voted to crack down on the vastly fashionable video app.
TikTok now faces an unsure path ahead.
President-elect Donald Trump issued an announcement after the Supreme Courtroom ruling saying the choice ought to be revered, and that his incoming administration would wish extra time to assessment the ruling. Trump has vowed to maintain TikTok alive within the U.S., however how he would possibly execute that promise stays murky.
One risk could be to revive a nationwide safety settlement generally known as Challenge Texas, which TikTok says it has spent greater than $2 billion on implementing. The plan goals to wall off any potential affect by Beijing by inserting Austin-based Oracle as a supervisor of kinds over the info exchanged between ByteDance and TikTok. It additionally permits for third-party audits of TikTok’s content material suggestion algorithm. Whether it is decided that TikTok has run afoul of the deal, the settlement features a “kill change” wherein federal officers might have TikTok turned off.
TikTok proposed the plan to the Biden administration, which, within the eleventh hour, walked away from the settlement with out ever stating why, based on courtroom papers filed in TikTok’s lawsuit in opposition to the administration over the divest-or-ban regulation.
Some longtime TikTok observers say Trump might renew these talks and decide that it represents “certified divestiture” — that means an association via whichTikTok is sufficiently distanced from ByteDance.
That dedication might be made solely on the discretion of the president and his administration. It palms the ultimate say over TikTok’s future within the U.S. to Trump. Regardless of promising to put the app out of business throughout his first time period, he has lately mentioned he is possible to offer it a 90-day reprieve as soon as he takes workplace.
