TikTok is down within the US Leave a comment

TikTok has gone darkish within the US now that the ban-or-divest regulation handed final 12 months is taking impact. The app has been faraway from each Apple and Google’s app shops, it’s unavailable on the net, and customers who open the app are blocked from viewing movies.

The shutdown has the astonishing impact of eradicating a social community utilized by 170 million folks within the US, in line with TikTok’s personal numbers. Whereas different social media platforms have skilled outages, even extended ones, no community as huge as TikTok has merely shut down with none indication of if or when it would come again on-line.

That is regardless of the Biden administration saying it’s passing enforcement duties on to the Trump administration and calling TikTok’s menace to go offline a “stunt.” TikTok has insisted that with out clearer assurances, it has to shut up store within the US.

Inside TikTok, an e mail to staff stated that “President Trump has indicated that he’ll work with us on an answer to reinstate TikTok as soon as he takes workplace” on January twentieth and that “groups are working tirelessly to deliver our app again to the U.S. as quickly as potential.”

A warning message began showing in TikTok’s app round 9PM ET on Saturday night, telling customers of the pending shutdown:

We remorse {that a} US regulation banning TikTok will take impact on January nineteenth and drive us to make our providers quickly unavailable.

We’re working to revive our service within the US as quickly as potential, and we recognize your assist. Please keep tuned.

The app started blocking customers round 10:30PM ET. A message now seems saying the app “isn’t obtainable proper now” however that the corporate expects a decision underneath President-elect Trump:

Sorry, TikTok isn’t obtainable proper now

A regulation banning TikTok has been enacted within the U.S. Sadly, meaning you may’t use TikTok for now.

We’re lucky that President Trump has indicated that he’ll work with us on an answer to reinstate TikTok as soon as he takes workplace. Please keep tuned!

A number of different apps owned by TikTok’s father or mother firm, ByteDance, have additionally been taken offline, together with the video editor CapCut and the social platform Lemon8.

The ban-or-divest regulation, which works into impact on Sunday, successfully bans TikTok until ByteDance sells a lot of its stake within the firm. However ByteDance has proven little signal of being prepared to promote, even because the deadline quickly approached. As an alternative, TikTok sued the US over the regulation, in the end dropping in a Supreme Courtroom case this previous week.

TikTok’s new technique seems to be relentlessly pandering to Trump, who — regardless of initially calling for the TikTok ban — has just lately indicated that he desires to discover a solution to preserve it round. Earlier at this time, he floated a 90-day extension of ByteDance’s deadline to promote.