NEW YORK (AP) — Millions of TikTok users in the United States are no longer able to watch videos on the social media platform as a federal ban on the extremely popular app takes effect. popular.
The company’s app was removed late Saturday from major app stores, including those operated by Apple and Google, while its website informed users that the short-form video platform was no longer available. The outage began just hours before the law took effect.
When users opened the TikTok app on Saturday, they encountered a pop-up message that read, “Sorry, TikTok is not available at the moment” and prevented them from scrolling through videos.
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the United States,” the post said. “Unfortunately, this means you cannot use TikTok at this time.”
“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 statement continued, referring to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to “save” the platform. The company asked its users to stay tuned.
The only option the message gives US users is to close the app or click on another option that takes them to the platform’s website. There, users receive the same message and have the option to download their data, an option that TikTok previously said could take days to process.
Before this announcement was made, TikTok said in another message to users that its service would be “temporarily unavailable” and told them it was working to restore its US service “as soon as possible.” But it’s unclear how long the platform will remain dark.
In an interview with NBC News on Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump said he was considering giving TikTok a 90-day extension that would allow them to continue operating. If such an extension happens, Trump — who once favored a TikTok ban — said it would “probably” be announced Monday, the day he is inaugurated as president. TikTok CEO Shou Chew expected to attend Trump’s inauguration with a prime location for seating.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long expressed concerns about the app, which they view as a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based technology company that operates the popular video editing apps CapCut and Lemon8, which were also unavailable for the service on Saturday evening.
Federal law required ByteDance to cut ties with TikTok by Sunday or face a nationwide ban. The statute was passed by Congress in April after being included as part of a $95 billion high-priority package which provided foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel. President Joe Biden I quickly signed itthen TikTok and ByteDance quickly filed suit on First Amendment grounds.
While defending the law in court, the Biden administration has argued that it is concerned that TikTok collects vast swathes of data on U.S. users that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion.
Authorities have also warned that the algorithm that powers what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape the platform’s content in ways that are difficult to detect. But to date, the United States has not publicly provided evidence that TikTok transmitted its users’ data to Chinese authorities or modified its algorithm to benefit Chinese interests.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Friday that the national security risk posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighs concerns about limiting the free speech of the app or its 170 million of users in the United States.
After the TikTok service began disappearing, some in China criticized the United States and accused it of removing the popular app. In an article published on Chinese social media platform Weibo, Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times, said: “TikTok’s announcement to stop its services in America marks the most dark in the development of the Internet. .”
“The country that claims to have the greatest freedom of expression has carried out the most brutal takedown of an internet application,” said Hu, now a political commentator. TikTok does not operate in China, where ByteDance instead offers Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sibling that follows Beijing’s strict censorship rules.
After the court’s ruling, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the Biden administration would leave implementation of the law to President-elect Donald Trump, given that his inauguration falls the day after the ban came into force.
But TikTok said Friday evening that it “would be forced into obscurity” if the administration did not provide a “definitive statement” to companies, like Apple, Google and Oracle, that provide its services in the United States.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called TikTok’s request a “set-up” and said there was no reason for TikTok or other companies to “take action in the coming days before the Trump administration takes office.” But despite these statements from the administration, confusion persisted about what was going to happen until TikTok began blocking its service.
Under the law, mobile app stores are prohibited from offering TikTok and internet hosting services from providing the service to U.S. users. Violators could face fines of up to $5,000 for each user who continues to access TikTok, meaning the penalties companies could face if they continue to offer TikTok could total a significant sum.
As written, experts said the law does not require TikTok to remove its platform, so it is unclear whether the company voluntarily shut it down or was not in compliance. able to keep the service alive after losing access support from its technology providers. The company did not respond to questions sent this week about its plans.
The statue allows the sitting president to extend the deadline by 90 days if a sale is pending. But no clear buyer has emerged and ByteDance has previously said it would not sell TikTok.
On Saturday, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity merging Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perplexity does not ask to buy the ByteDance algorithm which feeds TikTok users’ videos based on their interests and has made the platform such a phenomenon.
Other investors are also turning to TikTok. “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary recently said a consortium of investors he put together with billionaire Frank McCourt offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash. Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, also said last year that he was putting together a group of investors to buy TikTok.
___
Associated Press writer Kanis Leung contributed to this story from Hong Kong.
