It was the deadline feared by nearly 170 million young American content creators. The globally used platform TikTok made its online application inaccessible this Saturday, January 18 in the United States. But the company indicated that Donald Trump “will work on a solution” to “restore” it.
A message is now displayed on users' screens when attempting to log in. “A law banning TikTok has been implemented in the United States,” he said. “That means you can no longer use TikTok for now.” But it doesn't stop there. “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to restore TikTok once he takes office,” the text continues. “Stay tuned!” The message referred to a site which offered TikTokers the opportunity to download all of their data and content posted so far.
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An application that has become a social phenomenon in less than 10 years, extremely popular with young people, even very young Internet users, TikTok is no longer visible on the digital stores of Apple and Google in the United States. Since Friday, TikTok had asked the Biden government to send a clear signal to Internet providers and application store managers, to convince them not to suspend downloads and updates of the application. But the White House said Friday that “the application of the law must fall to the next government, which will take office on Monday.”
La “solution Trump”
A text passed by Congress by a large majority in April 2024 forces the Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the country. On Saturday, Donald Trump declared that he would study the matter closely once he was sworn in on Monday, and that a “90-day postponement would probably be decreed,” the real estate developer said during an interview with NBC. However, he had tried, during his first term, to have TikTok banned – in vain.
For the spokesperson for the White House – for the moment still a Democrat – Karine Jean-Pierre, TikTok's latest statements are a “maneuver”. “We see no reason for TikTok or other companies to act before the Trump administration takes office on Monday.”
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-Seized by TikTok as a last resort, the American Supreme Court unanimously refused on Friday to suspend the law. The nine senior magistrates considered that Congress's concerns “in matters of national security” were “well-founded”. American elected officials had justified the passing of the law by the need to prevent the Chinese authorities from accessing the data of American users or from manipulating opinion in the United States.
But if the platform was the subject of frank hostility from many American elected officials a year ago, the tide has turned. A political consensus has emerged in recent days, favorable to the preservation of TikTok and the buyout by American investors. But so far, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, has always officially refused to sell its jewel, even if several investors have come forward.
No sales recorded yet
Businessman Frank McCourt is ready to put $20 billion on the table with other partners, for the application's American activities, without his powerful algorithm. On Saturday, the artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Perplexity AI submitted a merger proposal to ByteDance with the American subsidiary of TikTok, a source close to the matter told AFP, which would enhance the social network at least 50 billion dollars.
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Donald Trump brought up TikTok during a phone conversation Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The boss of the social network, Shou Chew, is also one of the guests of honor for his inauguration ceremony on Monday. In addition to TikTok, all ByteDance applications in the United States were taken offline, including another social network, Lemon8, to which struggling TikTokers had migrated.
Just minutes after the suspension of the famous platform, several content creators uploaded videos to YouTube to welcome the “refugees” of TikTok. “Thank you for following me on YouTube,” said sensational press star Perez Hilton, who has nearly 470,000 subscribers on the video site, a Google subsidiary. Others expressed their shock and sadness at seeing their favorite application disappear from the internet, perhaps temporarily.
