Photo: Michael Dwyer/Canva
In the United States, the TikTok platform stopped working a few hours before a new law banning its use came into force. American users saw a message on their device screens stating that the law banning TikTok had already been signed and that it was not possible to use the platform “for now”, the BBC reports.
“We are pleased that President-elect Trump is willing to work with us to find a solution to get TikTok up and running again after he takes office,” TikTok said in a statement.
Along with TikTok, other applications owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, including the video editor CapCut and the social platform Lemon8, have also become unavailable in the US. According to users, TikTok has also disappeared from Google Play and the Apple App Store, and the platform’s official website no longer displays video content.
Donald Trump’s reaction
President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday that he would “probably” grant TikTok a 90-day extension to comply with the law once he takes office.
“A 90-day delay is probably the right thing to do. If I decide to do it, I will officially announce it on Monday,” he told NBC.
The Biden administration’s position and the court decision
The platform has previously warned that it may go dark as early as Sunday if the Biden administration does not provide guarantees that the ban will not be enforced.
On Friday, the US Supreme Court upheld a law requiring ByteDance to sell the US version of TikTok by 19 January, which the company has not yet done. The law, passed in April last year, requires platforms to be sold to a neutral party to avoid a complete ban.
TikTok has denied the legislation, claiming that it violates the right to free speech for the platform’s 170 million US users.
