Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images
TikTok is officially going dark in the United States now that a federal ban on the app is set to go into effect on January 19th. Around 6PM PT, the app began notifying people in the US, including Verge staffers, with a message that said the ban would “make our services temporarily unavailable.”
The message goes on to say, “We’re working to restore our service in the US as quickly as possible,” an outcome that will require action from the incoming Trump administration one way or another. A similar message is showing up in the CapCut video editor, which is also owned by TikTok.
Inside the company, an internal email viewed by The Verge says the news is “disappointing” but that “President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office” on the 20th, and “teams are working tirelessly to bring our app back to the U.S. as soon as possible.”
The message being shown to US TikTok users. A similar message is being shown in CapCut.
TikTok crashed into this outcome somewhat chaotically — it’s known this was the deadline since Biden signed the bill in April, but the company never appeared to have a backup plan to save its service if the Supreme Court ruled the law was constitutional, which happened on Friday. At the same time, the company was promising advertisers it would sort things out as recently as last night.
TikTok warned on Friday that it would be forced to go dark if the Biden administration didn’t promise to delay enforcement of the law penalties on TikTok’s service providers, like Apple and Google, which can be fined thousands of dollars per US user once the ban goes into effect. In response, the Biden administration said it had already passed enforcement responsibilities on to the Trump administration and called TikTok’s threat to go offline a “stunt.”
Trump — who kicked off the TikTok ban debate himself during his first term — has indicated he plans to extend the deadline for the ban by 90 days via an executive order once he is sworn in on January 20th, though it’s not clear if he means he will use the provision in the law that allows for a delay if a sale is pending or if he even has that option once the ban goes into effect. TikTok’s users are decidedly upset, of course — although none of them seem to be pressuring the company to sell as much as they’re pressuring politicians from both parties to rescind the ban.