CNN
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TikTok could be blacked out in the United States on Sunday after the Supreme Court upheld a ban on the Chinese-owned social media platform — but it could be back up as early as Monday.
Late Saturday, TikTok began displaying a notice that read: “We regret that a US law banning TikTok will go into effect on January 19 and will force us to make our services temporarily unavailable. We are working to restore our service in the US as soon as possible and appreciate your support. Please stay tuned.”
The announcement came just hours before the ban took effect. But how long the ban will last was in question after President-elect Donald Trump said he would “most likely” delay a ban on TikTok for 90 days after he takes office on Monday, adding that he has not made a decision final on the phone. interview with NBC News on Saturday.
“I think that would be, of course, an option that we look at. The 90 day extension is something that will most likely be done because it is convenient. You know, it’s convenient. We have to watch it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” Trump said in the interview.
“If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday,” he added.
The suggestion of an extension is the latest twist in a saga that has dragged on for months, leaving the fate of the app — with its 170 million US users — in limbo.
The law blocking TikTok was passed last year with strong bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Joe Biden. Lawmakers said TikTok’s ties to China and its access to data sets posed a threat to national security.
Many US users told CNN they were preparing to end the app, including influencers and other small businesses who said they depended on the platform for a living. Still, they said, they hoped the app would somehow be preserved.
But the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the ban, dashing hopes of a last-second judicial relief.
Later on Friday, TikTok said it would have gone offline on Sunday had it not been for intervention from the Biden administration. Some of the companies that operate app stores and run computer servers are said to be worried about being held liable. If TikTok goes dark, it will be because these service providers stop maintaining the app to avoid legal consequences.
Meanwhile, Trump — who first warned of TikTok’s dangers five years ago — is now casting himself as the app’s savior. Earlier this month, on his Truth Social account, he posted statistics about his popularity on TikTok and asked, “Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?”
TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in the weeks before the ban took effect and is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
The law passed last year allows the president to delay the ban’s entry into force for 90 days, but requires evidence that parties working to fix the sale of TikTok to a US-owned company have made significant progress.
But TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, has rejected potential buyers. The company has cited its popularity among American users and its value to small businesses across the country as it struggles to stay online without a change in ownership.
After the Supreme Court ruled, 9-0, to uphold the ban, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre signaled that the administration would not enforce the law on Biden’s final day in office.
Because of the federal holiday weekend and the inauguration, “enforcement actions should simply fall to the next administration,” she said.
But TikTok wasn’t happy with that statement. According to a person familiar with the matter, some service providers — companies like Google and Apple that would face exorbitant fines for allowing US access to TikTok after the ban goes into effect — told TikTok they believed they were vulnerable. according to the law starting from Sunday.
The service providers “don’t feel they’ve been given enough assurance that they won’t be liable,” the person told CNN late Friday.
So TikTok issued a public warning that it would be “forced to go dark” on Sunday unless the Biden administration was more clear “to appease the most critical non-enforcement service providers.”
That raised the prospect that TikTok would turn off its digital lights on Sunday morning — a move that would put even more pressure on Trump to negotiate a settlement in the coming weeks.
A White House source reiterated to CNN that there will be no fines from the Biden administration for keeping TikTok active on Sunday.
At the same time, however, some Biden officials are happy to let TikTok go dark for a day, as the bill passed with strong bipartisan support.
The decision “will be made by the next president anyway,” Biden told reporters Friday.
On Saturday, the White House called TikTok’s blackout warning a “stunt.”
“We see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take action in the coming days before the Trump administration takes office on Monday,” Jean-Pierre said. “We have expressed our position clearly and correctly: actions for the implementation of this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take any concerns with them.”
A TikTok spokesperson had no immediate comment on the statement from the White House.
For now, the company still expects service providers — like companies that operate servers full of video — to restrict access to the app at 12:01 a.m. Sunday.
In the Apple and Google app stores, the most popular free apps for the past week have been TikTok-like apps, including two that are also owned by Chinese companies. One of them, the photo-sharing app Lemon8, is owned by ByteDance, as is TikTok. But Lemon8 may have the same fate as TikTok in the future.
Given Trump’s public remarks about TikTok, any disruption may not last long.
Trump is said to be considering issuing an executive order that could effectively halt the ban and provide some time to work out a long-term solution.
But he will face pressure from many directions. Some Republican senators, such as Josh Hawley of Missouri and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, remain staunch supporters of the ban.
“ByteDance and its Chinese Communist masters had nine months to sell TikTok before Sunday’s deadline,” Cotton wrote on X. “The very fact that Communist China refuses to allow its sale reveals exactly what TikTok is: a Communist spy app .”
Analyst Richard Greenfield of LightShed Partners, who has long followed the TikTok saga, predicts that TikTok will eventually stay online in the United States.
On Saturday, Perplexity AI, a San Francisco-based AI search engine startup, confirmed to CNN that it submitted an offer to ByteDance to join TikTok.
