TikTok told users in the United States late Saturday that the app would be “temporarily unavailable” on Sunday when a law banning the app takes effect in the United States
Users who signed up received a message that the law “would force us to make our services temporarily unavailable. We are working to restore our service in the U.S. as quickly as possible.”
TikTok said Friday that the platform “will be forced to cease operations” on Jan. 19 unless the Biden administration “immediately issues a final statement” affirming that it will not enforce a ban.
On Thursday, a U.S. official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal Biden administration deliberations said President Joe Biden would not enforce a ban and the social media app’s fate remains in the balance In the hands of the elected president lies Donald Trump.
Congress last year required TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to divest the company by Jan. 19, a day before Trump’s inauguration, in a law signed by Biden. The official said the outgoing administration is leaving implementation of the law — and possible enforcement of the ban — to Trump.
With a U.S. ban on TikTok set to begin Sunday, The National asks cybersecurity strategist Ritesh Kotak what that might look like for the 170 million Americans who use the popular social media app and what it means for Canadian content creators.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law that would ban TikTok in the United States on national security grounds if ByteDance does not sell TikTok. This means that the popular short video app is well on its way to disappearing from the market.
The court’s 9-0 decision throws the social media platform and its 170 million American users into limbo and its fate rests in the hands of Trump, who had previously vowed to save TikTok after returning to the presidency on Monday was.
