TikTok said Sunday it was restoring service to users in the United States after the popular video-sharing platform went dark in response to a federal ban that President-elect Donald Trump said he would try to stop by executive order on his first day in his charge
Trump said he planned to issue the order to give TikTok’s China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer before the popular video-sharing platform is subject to a permanent U.S. ban . He announced the move on his Truth Social account as millions of US TikTok users woke up to find they could no longer access the TikTok app or platform.
Google and Apple pulled the app from their digital stores to comply with the law, which required them to do so if TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, did not sell its US operation on Sunday. The law, which passed with broad bipartisan support in April, allowed for hefty fines for noncompliance.
The company that runs TikTok said in a post on X that Trump’s announcement had provided “necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will not face any penalties for providing TikTok to more than 170 million of Americans”.
Some users reported shortly after TikTok’s statement that the app was working again, and the TikTok website appeared to be working for at least some users. Even though TikTok was flashing again, it could not be downloaded on Apple and Google app stores.
The law that took effect on Sunday forced ByteDance to cut ties with the platform’s US operations due to national security concerns raised by the app’s Chinese roots. However, the statute gave the acting president authority to grant a 90-day extension if there is a viable sale.
Although investors made some offers, ByteDance previously said it would not sell. In his post on Sunday, Trump said he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture,” but it was not immediately clear whether he was referring to the government or a US company.
Trump said his order would “extend the period of time before the law’s bans go into effect” and “confirm that there will be no accountability for any company that helped prevent TikTok from going dark before my order
“Americans deserve to see our exciting inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations,” Trump wrote.
TikTok’s intermittent availability comes after the US Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous ruling on Friday that the national security risk posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighed concerns about limiting speech app or its millions of users in the United States. .
When TikTok users in the United States tried to watch or post videos on the platform starting Saturday night, they saw a pop-up message under the heading: “Sorry, TikTok is not available right now.”
“A law has been enacted in the US that bans TikTok,” a pop-up message informed users who opened the TikTok app and tried to scroll through videos on Saturday night. “Unfortunately, this means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
The service outage that TikTok instituted hours earlier surprised most users. Experts had said the law as written did not require TikTok to remove its platform, only that app stores remove it. Current users were expected to continue to have access to the videos until the app stopped working due to a lack of updates.
“The TikTok community is like nothing else, so it’s weird not having that anymore,” content creator Tiffany Watson, 20, said on Sunday.
Watson said he had denied the impending shutdown and that with the time slot on his hands he plans to focus on strengthening his presence on Instagram and YouTube.
“There are still people who want beauty content,” Watson said.
The company’s app was also pulled Saturday afternoon from prominent app stores, including those operated by Apple and Google. Apple told customers with their devices that it also removed other apps developed by TikTok’s China-based parent company, including one that some social media influencers had promoted as an alternative.
“Apple is required to follow the laws of the jurisdictions in which it operates,” the company said.
Trump’s plan to issue an executive order to spare TikTok on his first day in office reflected the fortuitous timing of the ban and the unusual mix of political considerations surrounding a social media platform that first gained popularity with videos often silly with dances and music videos.
During his first term in the White House, Trump issued executive orders in 2020 banning TikTok and the Chinese messaging app WeChat, moves that were later blocked by the courts. However, when momentum for a ban emerged in Congress last year, he opposed the legislation. Trump has since credited TikTok with helping him win the support of young voters in last year’s presidential election.
Despite its own part in enacting the nationwide ban, the Biden administration has stressed in recent days that it had no intention of implementing or enforcing the ban before Trump took office on Monday.
In the nine months since Congress passed the sell-or-ban law, no clear buyers have emerged, and ByteDance has publicly insisted it won’t sell TikTok. But Trump said he hoped his administration could facilitate a deal to “save” the app.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration with prime location.
Chew posted a video on Saturday afternoon thanking Trump for his commitment to work with the company to keep the app available in the US and take a “strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.”
Trump’s national security adviser pick, Michael Waltz, told CBS News on Sunday that the president-elect discussed keeping TikTok dark in the US during a weekend call with Chinese President Xi Jinping “and they agreed work together on this.”
On Saturday, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity that would merge Perplexity with TikTok’s US business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perplexity is not asking to buy the ByteDance algorithm that feeds TikTok users’ videos based on their interests and has made the platform such a phenomenon.
Other investors also looked at TikTok. “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary recently told a consortium of investors that he and billionaire Frank McCourt offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash. Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said last year that he was forming a group of investors to buy TikTok.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long expressed concern about TikTok, warning that the algorithm that powers what users watch is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities. But so far, the US has not publicly provided evidence that TikTok has handed over user data to Chinese authorities or modified its algorithm to benefit Chinese interests.