The social network created by a Chinese company stopped working this Sunday, January 19 in the United States where it has more than 170 million users.
President-elect Donald Trump announced this Sunday, January 19, his intention to issue a decree once inaugurated on Monday to suspend the law banning TikTok in the United States, and proposed that the social network be 50% controlled by American shareholders.
The law passed in Congress in 2024 came into force on Sunday, making the short video platform inaccessible to more than 170 million users in the United States.
The text provides for the possibility for the Head of State to postpone the implementation for 90 days while finding a buyer, an alternative offered to the parent company of TikTok, the Chinese ByteDance, in place of the ban.
ByteDance has so far refused to sell this platform launched barely ten years ago and which has become essential for a large majority of young Internet users.
Trump encourages internet providers to immediately restore
Donald Trump even encouraged internet providers and application stores to immediately restore access to TikTok, promising that his executive order would retroactively protect them against possible sanctions.
The law provides, in fact, for very heavy fines for these technical service providers, up to $5,000 per user for application stores.
“I ask companies not to leave TikTok in the dark!”urged the real estate developer on his Truth Social network.
Donald Trump also revealed the outlines of what appears to him to be a solution to the sensitive issue of control of the TikTok subsidiary in the United States by Chinese interests.
-“I would like to see a joint company 50% controlled by Americans”wrote the president-elect. “Without an American agreement, there is no TikTok. With our validation, it is worth several hundred billions, even thousands of billions.”
The network is working on its recovery
Concretely, TikTok stopped working in the United States late Saturday, January 18 at the end of the day and disappeared from the Google and Apple application stores, before a law came into force this Sunday, January 19, 2025 prohibiting the application in the country.
The social network announced this Sunday that it was working to restore access to its application in the United States, just hours after having suspended it to comply with a law passed in Congress.
STATEMENT FROM TIKTOK:
In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170…
— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) https://twitter.com/TikTokPolicy/status/1881030712188346459?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In a message posted on
