The video app that once styled itself a joyful politics-free zone is now bracing for a nationwide ban and pinning its hopes on President-elect Donald Trump.
The fate of Tiktok is in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump after the Supreme Court upheld the ban Friday..
In July 2020, then-President Donald Trump told reporters he would ban TikTok. The next month, he signed an executive order seeking to ban the app.
TikTok on Friday said that it would turn off more than 170 million Americans’ access to the super popular video app on Sunday, unless President Joe Biden’s administration acts urgently to assure the company it will not be punished for violating the terms of its looming ban.
The possibility of the U.S. outlawing TikTok kept influencers and users in anxious limbo during the four-plus years that lawmakers and judges debated the fate of the video-sharing app. Now, the moment its fans dreaded is here , but uncertainty over TikTok’s future lingers.
After TikTok said it would be "forced to go dark" on Sunday unless the White House took action, President-elect Trump told ABC News he'd be likely to grant the social media company an extension.
TikTok isn’t the villain here. It’s a symptom of a much larger issue: the lack of clear, enforceable rules for data privacy and security. Instead of banning the app, the government should focus on fixing the system.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew posted a video message to user in the US and thanked Donald Trump after the US Supreme Court upheld a law potentially shutting down the platform due to alleged national security concerns over its Chinese ownership.
The case hinges on whether TikTok can convince Justices that such a mandate violates the First Amendment by forcing a foreign-controlled app to sell or shut down. As of Friday, they have not — and the Court has compelled Tik-Tok to be sold or shuttered this weekend.
With the Supreme Court and Biden administration declining to step in, and Trump not saying exactly what he'll do, TikTok appears poised to shut down on Jan. 19. Here's what we know.