The TikTok logo is screened on a mobile phone with U.S. flag in the background for illustration photo in Krakow, Poland, on Jan. 17.
Photo via Getty Images
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Photo via Getty Images
TikTok is no longer accessible to users in the U.S., the result of a controversial law forcing the popular platform offline unless it splits away from its China-based owner, ByteDance.
When users tried to open the app around 10:35 p.m. ET, a message appeared: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” it read. “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
The message then said President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
Around the same time, TikTok also stopped appearing on the Apple and Google Play app stores, preventing the app to be downloaded and cutting the app off from critical software updates.
It represents the first time in history the U.S. government has outlawed a widely popular social media network.
The pop-up message millions of users across the U.S. received when they tried to open TikTok on Saturday night, hours before a ban law was set to take effect.
Bobby Allyn/NPR
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Bobby Allyn/NPR
The TikTok ban could be short lived, however.
Early Sunday, Trump said he plans to issue an executive order on Monday to pause the ban to give TikTok time to distance itself from ByteDance. “I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations.”
The day before, Trump had suggested he would “most likely” give a 90-day reprieve.
-Yet it is unclear if it is too late for Trump to legally extend the ban’s start date. Such an extension is allowed under the law, though it does require a binding certification to Congress that steps toward divesting from ByteDance are in motion.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said in a statement on Sunday that Trump does not have the power to pause the TikTok ban. “Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension,’” Cotton said, noting TikTok can only be restored when it has satisfied Congress’ requirement that it be divorced from Beijing.
The law, recently upheld by the Supreme Court, directed Apple and Google to remove the service from app stores. It also required web-hosting firms, including TikTok’s back-end cloud provider, Oracle, to stop supporting the app or face penalties that could reach into the billions of dollars.
Trump said in his post that he would provide a liability shield to any company that works with TikTok. But legal culpability was determined by Congress, and experts say Trump may need to call on lawmakers to amend the law in order for companies to be willing to support TikTok before it can be split off from ByteDance.
Trump also wrote that he would like a U.S. company or investors to have a 50% stake in TikTok, but he did not elaborate.
TikTok’s uncertain path forward
It remains to be seen how long the service will remain offline, but the development has drawn criticism from free speech advocates, who said it amounts to the kind of government censorship America often condemns on the global stage.
Free-speech group PEN America attacked the Supreme Court’s decision. “Restricting access to foreign media is a hallmark of repressive governments, and we should always be wary when national security is invoked to silence speech,” the advocacy group said in a statement on Friday.
Others apps owned by ByteDance, including video editing app CapCut and Lemon8, were also blocked for U.S. users on Saturday.
The prospect of a TikTok shutdown in the U.S. has been discussed for more than four years, but it often has been stymied by courts or dissolved amid political bickering.
In April 2024, however, Congress passed a ban with overwhelming bipartisan support. Lawmakers fear TikTok’s owner ByteDance could be manipulated by the Chinese government — exposing Americans’ data and content feeds to the whims of an adversarial regime.
Earlier this month, TikTok argued before the Supreme Court that the law represents an unprecedented suppression of free speech. Yet the Supreme Court ruled in an unsigned unanimous decision that “divestiture is necessary” to resolve lawmakers’ fears about China. Therefore, the court ruled, Congress acted lawfully when it voted to crack down on the hugely popular video app.
TikTok now faces an uncertain path forward.
Despite promising to put the app out of business during his first term, Trump has vowed to keep TikTok alive in the U.S. But how he might execute that promise remains murky.
One possibility would be to revive a national security agreement known as Project Texas, which TikTok says it has spent more than $2 billion on implementing. The plan aims to wall off any potential influence by Beijing by placing Austin-based Oracle as a supervisor of sorts over the data exchanged between ByteDance and TikTok. It also allows for third-party audits of TikTok’s content recommendation algorithm. If it is determined that TikTok has run afoul of the deal, the agreement includes a “kill switch” in which federal officials could have TikTok turned off.
TikTok proposed the plan to the Biden administration, which, in the eleventh hour, walked away from the agreement without ever stating why, according to court papers filed in TikTok’s lawsuit against the administration over the divest-or-ban law.
Some longtime TikTok observers say Trump may renew these talks and determine that it represents “qualified divestiture” — meaning an arrangement through whichTikTok is sufficiently distanced from ByteDance.
That determination can be made solely at the discretion of the president and his administration. It hands the final say over TikTok’s future in the U.S. to Trump.
