TikTok ban live: App goes offline with message saying it’s ‘temporarily unavailable’ as deadline for US ban imminent

TikTok customers are now not ready to make use of the platform after the app went darkish on Saturday night. Customers noticed the next message when attempting to go browsing to the app a few day earlier than a ban is ready to enter impact.

Within the message, TikTok leaders stated they “are lucky that President Trump has indicated that he’ll work with us on an answer.”

After amassing greater than 170 million customers within the nation in lower than seven years, TikTok is now going through an outright ban within the US.

Anthony Cuthbertson reviews on the way it turned essentially the most controversial app on the planet.

Huge social media app TikTok might be banned within the US except its Chinese language dad or mum firm sells it by Sunday. On the time of writing, the app stays lively in the US.

The proposed ban was enacted by Congress with bipartisan supportin April. Now, that regulation is being disputed in entrance of the Supreme Courtroom. The ban gave Chinese language-owned ByteDance till 19 January to promote TikTok. If it fails to take action, a nationwide ban is ready to return into power – regardless of having 170 million US customers.

An increasing number of TikTok customers have turned to the corporate’s different social media app, Lemon8. This Instagram-meets-Pinterest life-style app is being promoted furiously by dad or mum firm ByteDance.

Efforts to ban TikTok resurfaced in Congress early final yr, and rapidly gained bipartisan help amongst lawmakers who voiced concerning the potential for the platform to surveil and manipulate Individuals.

The laws the Supreme Courtroom upheld handed the Home and the Senate in April after it was included as a part of a high-priority $95 billion bundle that offered international assist to Ukraine and Israel. President Joe Biden rapidly signed it, and the 2 firms and a gaggle of content material creators rapidly sued.

A decrease courtroom upheld the statute in early December. The laws gave ByteDance 9 months from the enactment date to promote TikTok, and a attainable three-month extension if a sale was in progress.

The deadline’s arrival the day earlier than Trump’s inauguration makes issues difficult. Solely the sitting president can challenge a 90-day keep on the ban and may achieve this provided that a purchaser has taken concrete steps towards a purchase order.

Though consultants have stated the app wouldn’t disappear from present customers’ telephones Sunday, new customers gained’t have the ability to obtain it and updates gained’t be accessible. That may finally render the app unworkable, the Justice Division has stated in courtroom filings.

Between January 2021 and August 2022, representatives for TikTok engaged in critical negotiations with the Biden administration concerning the app’s future within the U.S. The talks resulted in a 90-page draft safety settlement that the corporate offered to CFIUS in August 2022. The 2 sides then ceased substantive negotiations, in response to TikTok’s attorneys, although some conferences additionally occurred in following months.

A duplicate of the draft settlement submitted in courtroom confirmed that it might have opened up TikTok’s U.S. platform for safety inspections and blocked entry of U.S. consumer information from China. The corporate says it has already applied some provisions of the settlement, together with routing U.S. consumer information to servers operated by software program large Oracle.

In its lawsuit to overturn the sell-or-ban regulation, the corporate stated it spent greater than $2 billion to implement points of its appeasement plan, which it calls Challenge Texas.

However the Division of Justice and administration officers argued in courtroom paperwork that the proposal did not create enough separation between TikTok’s U.S. operations and China. In addition they stated the opacity of TikTok’s algorithm, coupled with the scale and technical complexity of the platform, made it inconceivable for the U.S. authorities – or its expertise supplier, Oracle – to successfully assure compliance with the proposal.

In February 2023, the White Home directed federal companies to take away TikTok from government-issued units, mirroring another international locations that additionally prohibited the usage of the app on official units.

The next month, lawmakers grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew throughout an hours-long listening to by which he sought to reassure a tense Home committee that the platform prioritized consumer security and shouldn’t be banned on account of its Chinese language connections.

In line with courtroom paperwork, TikTok’s representatives had their final assembly with CFIUS in September 2023. Later that yr, criticism in opposition to the platform elevated in quantity amongst Republicans in Washington who claimed the platform amplified pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel content material, an accusation the corporate vigorously denied.

Challenges got here in tandem with TikTok’s success. U.S. officers expressed issues concerning the firm’s roots and possession, pointing to legal guidelines in China that require Chinese language firms handy over information requested by the federal government. One other concern turned the proprietary algorithm that populates what customers see on the app.

Throughout his first time period in workplace, Trump issued government orders in 2020 banning TikTok and the Chinese language messaging app WeChat, strikes that courts subsequently blocked. India banned TikTok — together with different Chinese language apps — the identical yr following a army conflict alongside the India-China border that killed 20 Indian and 4 Chinese language troopers.

In 2021, the Biden administration dropped the Trump-era orders however left in place a nationwide safety evaluate of TikTok by a little-known authorities company often known as Committee on Overseas Funding in the US, or CFIUS.

TikTok is considered one of greater than 100 apps developed up to now decade by ByteDance, a expertise agency based in 2012 by Chinese language entrepreneur Zhang Yiming and headquartered in Beijing’s northwestern Haidian district.

In 2016, ByteDance launched a short-form video platform known as Douyin in China and adopted up with a global model known as TikTok. It then purchased Musical.ly, a lip-syncing platform in style with teenagers within the U.S. and Europe, and mixed it with TikTok whereas conserving the app separate from Douyin.

Quickly after, the app boomed in reputation within the U.S. and lots of different international locations, changing into the primary Chinese language platform to make critical inroads within the West. Not like different social media platforms that targeted on cultivating connections amongst customers, TikTok tailor-made content material to individuals’s pursuits.

The customarily foolish movies and music clips content material creators posted gave TikTok a picture as a sunny nook of the web the place customers may discover enjoyable and a way of authenticity. Discovering an viewers on the platform helped launch the careers of music artists like Lil Nas X.

TikTok gained extra traction in the course of the shutdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, when brief dances that went viral turned a mainstay of the app. To higher compete, Instagram and YouTube finally got here out with their very own instruments for making short-form movies, respectively often known as Reels and Shorts. By that time, TikTok was a bona fide hit.

The potential for the U.S. outlawing TikTok saved influencers and customers in anxious limbo in the course of the four-plus years that lawmakers and judges debated the destiny of the video-sharing app. Now, the second its followers dreaded is right here, however uncertainty over TikTok’s future lingers.

On Friday, the Supreme Courtroom upheld a federal regulation that bans the immensely in style, trend-setting social media platform beginning Sunday except its China-based dad or mum firm, ByteDance Ltd., sells to an accepted purchaser.

The unanimous resolution ended a authorized battle that pitted nationwide safety issues in opposition to free speech rights. TikTok, ByteDance and among the devoted customers who depend on the platform for leisure, revenue and group argued the statute violated the First Modification. The Biden administration sought to indicate ByteDance’s possession and management of TikTok posed an unacceptable menace.

The Supreme Courtroom ruling, nevertheless, will not be assured to finish the TikTok saga, which has develop into enveloped within the wider battle between Beijing and Washington. A Biden administration official informed The Related Press on Thursday that the outgoing administration would depart the regulation’s implementation — and potential enforcement — to President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump, who is ready to return to the White Home the day after the ban takes impact, has credited TikTok with serving to him win the help of extra younger voters in final yr’s election. A Trump adviser stated this week that the incoming administration would “put measures in place to maintain TikTok from going darkish.” What these measures will seem like — and if they’ll stand up to authorized scrutiny — remained unknown Saturday.

A Chinese language short-form video app known as Xiaohongshu is now the highest free app within the Apple App Retailer, as social media customers look to get out forward of a possible US TikTok ban set to take impact on Sunday.

Josh Marcus takes a glance.