A message studying “Sorry, TikTok isn’t out there proper now” is displayed from the TikTok app on a cellular phone display screen on Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025, in Los Angeles. —AP Picture/Andy Bao
CULVER CITY, California — TikTok stated Sunday it was restoring service to customers in the US after the favored video-sharing platform went darkish in response to a federal ban that President-elect Donald Trump stated he would attempt to pause by govt order on his first day in workplace.
Trump stated he deliberate to concern the order to offer TikTok’s China-based guardian firm extra time to search out an authorised purchaser earlier than the favored video-sharing platform is topic to a everlasting US ban. He introduced the transfer on his Reality Social account as hundreds of thousands of US TikTok customers awoke to find they might not entry the TikTok app or platform.
Google and Apple eliminated the app from their digital shops to adjust to the legislation, which required them to take action if TikTok guardian firm ByteDance didn’t promote its U.S. operation by Sunday. The legislation, which handed with broad bipartisan assist in April, allowed for steep fines for non-compliance.
The corporate that runs TikTok stated in a submit on X that Trump’s submit had supplied “the required readability and assurance to our service suppliers that they are going to face no penalties offering TikTok to over 170 million People.”
READ: TikTok shuts down US entry as Trump seeks app’s reinstatement
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Some customers reported quickly after TikTok’s assertion that the app was working once more, and TikTok’s web site seemed to be functioning for a minimum of some customers. Whilst TikTok was flickering again on, it remained unavailable for obtain in Apple and Google’s app shops.
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The legislation that took impact Sunday required ByteDance to chop ties with the platform’s US operations as a consequence of nationwide safety considerations posed by the app’s Chinese language roots. Nonetheless, the statute gave the sitting president authority to grant a 90-day extension if a viable sale is underway.
Though buyers made just a few provides, ByteDance beforehand stated it will not promote. In his submit on Sunday, Trump stated he “would love the US to have a 50 % possession place in a three way partnership,” however it was not instantly clear if he was referring to the federal government or an American firm.
Trump stated his order would “prolong the time period earlier than the legislation’s prohibitions take impact” and “verify that there will likely be no legal responsibility for any firm that helped hold TikTok from going darkish earlier than my order.
“People need to see our thrilling Inauguration on Monday, in addition to different occasions and conversations,” Trump wrote.
The on-and-off availability of TikTok got here after the US Supreme Courtroom held in a unanimous ruling Friday that the danger to nationwide safety posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighed considerations about limiting speech by the app or its hundreds of thousands of customers in the US.
When TikTok customers within the US tried to observe or submit movies on the platform as of Saturday night time, they noticed a pop-up message below the headline, “Sorry, TikTok isn’t out there proper now.”
“A legislation banning TikTok has been enacted within the US,” a pop-up message knowledgeable customers who opened the TikTok app and tried to scroll by way of movies on Saturday night time. “Sadly meaning you may’t use TikTok for now.”
The service interruption TikTok instituted hours early caught most customers unexpectedly. Consultants had stated the legislation as written didn’t require TikTok to take down its platform, just for app shops to take away it. Present customers had been anticipated to proceed to have entry to movies till the app stopped working as a consequence of an absence of updates.
“The group on TikTok is like nothing else, so it’s bizarre to not have that anymore,” content material creator Tiffany Watson, 20, stated Sunday.
Watson stated she had been in denial concerning the looming shutdown and with the area time on her arms plans to give attention to bolstering her presence on Instagram and YouTube.
“There are nonetheless folks on the market who need magnificence content material,” Watson stated.
The corporate’s app additionally was eliminated late Saturday from outstanding app shops, together with those operated by Apple and Google. Apple advised prospects with its units that it additionally took down different apps developed by TikTok’s China-based guardian firm, together with one which some social media influencers had promoted in its place.
“Apple is obligated to comply with the legal guidelines within the jurisdictions the place it operates,” the corporate stated.
Trump’s plan to concern an govt order to spare TikTok on his first day in workplace mirrored the ban’s coincidental timing and the bizarre mixture of political concerns surrounding a social media platform that first gained reputation with typically foolish movies that includes dances and music clips.
Throughout his first time period within the White Home, Trump issued govt orders in 2020 banning TikTok and the Chinese language messaging app WeChat, strikes that courts subsequently blocked. When momentum for a ban emerged in Congress final 12 months, nonetheless, he opposed the laws. Trump has since credited TikTok with serving to him win assist from younger voters in final 12 months’s presidential election.
Regardless of its personal half in getting the nationwide ban enacted, the Biden administration burdened in latest days that it didn’t intend to implement or implement the ban earlier than Trump takes workplace on Monday.
Within the 9 months since Congress handed the sale-or-ban legislation, no clear consumers emerged, and ByteDance publicly insisted it will not promote TikTok. However Trump stated he hoped his administration might facilitate a deal to “save” the app.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is predicted to attend Trump’s inauguration with a main seating location.
Chew posted a video late Saturday thanking Trump for his dedication to work with the corporate to maintain the app out there within the US and taking a “robust stand for the First Modification and towards arbitrary censorship.”
Trump’s selection for nationwide safety adviser, Michael Waltz, advised CBS Information on Sunday that the president-elect mentioned TikTok going darkish within the US throughout a weekend name with Chinese language President Xi Jinping “and so they agreed to work collectively on this.”
On Saturday, synthetic intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a brand new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s US enterprise, in keeping with an individual accustomed to the matter.
Perplexity is just not asking to buy the ByteDance algorithm that feeds TikTok consumer’s movies based mostly on their pursuits and has made the platform such a phenomenon.
Different buyers additionally eyed TikTok. “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary just lately stated a consortium of buyers that he and billionaire Frank McCourt provided ByteDance $20 billion in money. Trump’s former treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, additionally stated final 12 months that he was placing collectively an investor group to purchase TikTok.
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In Washington, lawmakers and administration officers have lengthy raised considerations about TikTok, warning the algorithm that fuels what customers see is susceptible to manipulation by Chinese language authorities. However so far, the US has not publicly supplied proof of TikTok handing consumer knowledge to Chinese language authorities or tinkering with its algorithm to profit Chinese language pursuits. —AP
