Millions of TikTok users in the United States (US) can no longer watch videos on the social network after a federal ban on the hugely popular app went into effect.
The company's app was removed from major app stores including those operated by Apple and Google on Saturday evening, while the company's website told users that the short-form video platform was no longer available.
The service outage began just hours before the new US law went into effect.
When users opened the TikTok app on Saturday, they were greeted with a message apologizing to the company and saying that TikTok was currently unavailable.
"The law banning TikTok has come into effect in the US," the message reads, adding that unfortunately this means you can't use TikTok for now.
"We are fortunate that President Trump has announced that he will work with us on a solution to restore TikTok when he takes office," the post added, referring to Trump, who takes office on Monday, January 20, promising to "save" the platform. The company told users to stay tuned.
US President-elect Donald Trump said yesterday that he would likely give TikTok another 90 days to reach a sale deal to avoid a ban in the US.
Trump said in an interview with NBC News that he has not yet decided what to do, but that he is considering postponing the TikTok ban after he is sworn in on Monday, the AP reported.
Before TikTok's announcement went live, the company announced in another message to users that its service would be "temporarily unavailable" and told them it was working to restore service as soon as possible. But how long the platform would remain in the dark is unclear, the AP reports.
A law that prohibits mobile app vendors and internet hosting services from distributing TikTok to users in the US goes into effect on Sunday.
It's not entirely clear what options Trump has when he takes the oath of office on Monday.
The law allows a 90-day pause in implementing restrictions on the app, but only if progress is made toward selling the company before the law takes effect, Voice of America reports.
The dispute over TikTok's ties to China has become the epitome of geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing.
Under a law passed by Congress and signed by outgoing U.S. President Joseph Biden last year, TikTok's China-based parent company, ByteDance, had nine months to sell the U.S. portion of the app. The law allows the current president to approve an extension if the sale is in progress, according to the AP.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long raised concerns about the app, which they see as a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based technology company that also operates popular video editing apps CapCut and Lemon8, which were also unavailable for use Saturday night.
The US Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Friday that the national security risks posed by TikTok's ties to China outweigh concerns about speech restrictions by the app and its 170 million US users.
When TikTok's service began to shut down, some in China condemned and accused the US of stifling the popular app.
In a post on the Chinese platform Weibo, Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times, said that "TikTok's announcement to suspend services in America marks the darkest moment in the development of the Internet."
"The country that claims to have the most freedom of speech has carried out the most brutal shutdown of an internet application," said Hu, who is now a political commentator.
TikTok does not operate in China, where ByteDance instead offers Doujin, TikTok's Chinese sister app that follows Beijing's strict censorship regulations.
After the court's announcement, White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the Biden administration would leave the implementation of the law to President-elect Donald Trump, given that his inauguration comes the day after the ban takes effect.
But TikTok said on Friday it would be forced to black out its screens if the administration did not provide a definitive statement to companies such as Apple, Google and Oracle through which its services are provided in the US.
By law, mobile app stores are not allowed to offer TikTok and internet service providers are not allowed to offer the service to US users. Those who violate the ban can be fined up to $5.000 for each user who continues to access TikTok, meaning the fines that companies that offer TikTok could face could be very high.
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