TikTok starts warning US users it will be “temporarily unavailable”
TikTok is officially going dark in the United States now that a federal ban on the app is set to go into effect on January 19th. Around 9PM ET, the app began notifying people in the US with a message that said the ban will “make our services temporarily unavailable.”
The message goes on to say that TikTok is “working to restore our service in the US as quickly as possible” — an outcome that will require action from the incoming Trump administration one way or another. A similar message is showing up in the CapCut video editor, which is also owned by TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
Inside TikTok, an internal memo viewed by The Verge calls the news “disappointing” but tells employees that, “President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office” on the 20th, and “teams are working tirelessly to bring our app back to the U.S. as soon as possible.” Shortly after the memo was shared with employees, both TikTok and Capcut started showing the same line about Trump to users.
TikTok crashed into this outcome somewhat chaotically. It has known this was the deadline for being banned since Biden signed the bill in April, but the company never appeared to have a backup plan to save itself if the Supreme Court ruled the law was constitutional, which happened on Friday. At the same time, TikTok was promising advertisers it would sort things out as recently as last night.
TikTok warned on Friday that it would be forced to go dark if the Biden administration didn’t promise to delay enforcement of the law penalties on TikTok’s service providers, like Apple and Google, which can be fined thousands of dollars per US user once the ban goes into effect. In response, the Biden administration said it had already passed enforcement responsibilities on to the Trump administration and called TikTok’s threat to go offline a “stunt.”
Trump — who tired to ban TikTok five years ago — has indicated he plans to extend the deadline for the ban by 90 days via an executive order once he is sworn in on January 20th. It’s not clear if he will use the provision in the law that allows for a delay if a sale is pending, or if he even has that option once the ban goes into effect. TikTok’s users are decidedly upset, of course, although none of them seem to be pressuring the company to sell as much as they’re pressuring politicians from both parties to rescind the ban.
Update, January 18th: Noted that TikTok and CapCut app shutdowns have begun in the US.