New York CNN —
The clock has run out on TikTok — at least for now.
Late Saturday night, TikTok became unusable for Americans, who were met with a message saying the app was offline and asking users to “stay tuned.”
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now,” the message read in part. The app was also unavailable on the Apple and Google Play stores, along with Lemon8 and CapCut, which are also owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance.
TikTok’s decision to shut the app down entirely, which the company had warned it would do, capped off several weeks of uncertainty. And it marks a significant disruption for TikTok’s 170 million American users, many of whom use the app for hours every day to find news, entertainment and community and, in some cases, to make a living.
But while the super-popular video app has gone dark, the decision to turn off TikTok may not be final.
In fact, it may last just a few dozen hours.
President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News on Saturday he will “most likely” delay the ban on TikTok for 90 days after he takes office on Monday. And Trump said the announcement could come on his first day in office.
“If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday,” he said.
Such an announcement could serve as a kind of immediate political victory for Trump with America’s youth. Although Trump supported a TikTok ban in his first term as president, he has recently said he wants to keep the app alive — posting on Truth Social Sunday morning: “SAVE TIKTOK!” Last month, he asked the Supreme Court to stay the law so his incoming administration could work out a deal to keep TikTok available to Americans. The Supreme Court upheld the law on Friday.
TikTok appealed to Trump in its pop-up message on the app starting late Saturday night notifying users that the app was unavailable in the United States.
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” the company posted in its pop-up message. “Please stay tuned!”
And TikTok CEO Shou Chew also lauded Trump in a video responding to the company’s Supreme Court loss on Friday, saying, “we are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform, one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process.”
Trump attributed his election victory in part to TikTok at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in December.
“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said, then claiming to have won the youth vote by a significant margin. “And there are those that say that TikTok had something to do with it.”
The law banning TikTok passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress, citing national security concerns. Although a Pew Research Center Survey in 2023 found about half of Americans supported the ban, it has consistently proven unpopular with younger generations.
With an executive order, Trump could delay enforcement of the ban for 90 days to give TikTok parent company ByteDance more time to find an American owner. That could be welcome news to TikTok’s technology partners, including Oracle, which hosts TikTok’s content in the United States, and Apple and Google, which host the app on their app stores. Under the law, those companies could face penalties of up to $5,000 per person who has access to TikTok once the ban is in place starting Sunday.
The app going dark marks the realization of a yearslong effort to block US access to TikTok over national security concerns related to its China-based owner ByteDance. Outgoing President Joe Biden signed a law last April that gave ByteDance 270 days to sell TikTok to an owner from the United States or one of its allies or face a ban.
So even if Trump pledges to reverse the ban, he can’t simply undo a law passed by Congress and signed by a president with an executive order. Trump could pledge not to enforce the ban, but that means the Oracles, Apples and Googles of the world will be taking on an enormous risk — they’ll still be breaking the law, even if they are given guarantees that they won’t be punished for it.
That’s why TikTok shut down in the first place. Despite the Biden administration all but saying they would defer enforcement to the incoming Trump administration, a person close to TikTok says “multiple critical service providers” indicated to TikTok that they were concerned that the ban might be enforced starting Sunday.
For example, Apple released a statement Sunday that cited the ban as its reason for removing TikTok from its app store. It noted the app will remain available for customers who already downloaded it, but it won’t be able to be redownloaded if deleted.
“Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,” the company said in its statement. “Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.”
The only truly permanent solutions to keep TikTok online appear to be: 1) pass a new law reversing the old one — no easy task, considering that the existing bill had such broad bipartisan support in Congress — or 2) force a sale to an acceptable buyer.
Two potential buyers — a group led by billionaire Frank McCourt and “Shark Tank’s” Kevin O’Leary, as well as AI search engine PerplexityAI — have submitted formal bids for the app and others have reportedly shown interest in TikTok.
ByteDance, however, has long been adamant that it has no intention of selling. TikTok’s near-magical algorithm, keeping users hooked on the app, is its secret power, and putting a price tag on such a valuable commodity, envied by every other social media app, is difficult.
McCourt’s buyer group has said it would buy TikTok’s US assets without the algorithm and rebuild the app, but tech giants like Meta and YouTube have for years worked to replicate TikTok’s popular algorithm without quite succeeding. O’Leary told CNN he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month to discuss the outlook for the app.
Spinning off an American-only version of TikTok could also mean the rest of the world has to download a new app to access US users’ content. Yet Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported last week that China is weighing a sale — to Elon Musk.
Musk may have the resources to buy the app, and he’s a major Trump supporter and about to take a quasi-role in his government. But it’s unclear that he would want to, and he has not publicly commented on the reports.
If ByteDance chooses to engage, Trump could perhaps argue that significant progress has been made on a deal — a legal threshold that would legally permit Trump to reverse the ban to allow the sale process to commence.
That’s only a temporary measure, though. The sale would ultimately need to go through. Until then, TikTok’s future will remain very much in doubt.
– CNN’s Brian Stelter contributed to this report.
