Millions of TikTok users in the United States were no longer able to scroll and watch videos on the social media platform on Sunday as a federal ban on the immensely popular app took effect.
The company's app was removed Saturday evening from prominent app stores, including those operated by Apple and Google, while its website told users that the short-form video platform was no longer available. The blackout began just hours before the law took effect.
Users opening the TikTok app on Saturday encountered a pop-up message preventing them from scrolling videos that read, "Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now."
"A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.," the message said. "Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now."
"We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office," the notice continued, in reference to President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to "save” the platform. The company told its users to stay tuned.
The message only allows U.S. users to close the app or click another option that leads them to the platform's website. There, users are shown the same message and allowed to download their data, an action TikTok previously said may take days to process.
Before the announcement went out, TikTok sent another message to users stating that its service would be "temporarily unavailable" and that it was working to restore its U.S. service "as soon as possible." However, it is unclear how long the platform will remain dark.
Apple said in a statement on its website that TikTok and ByteDance apps were no longer available in the U.S., while visitors to the country could have limited access. "Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,” the company said.
"If you already have these apps installed on your device, they will remain on your device. But they can’t be redownloaded if deleted or restored if you move to a new device. In-app purchases and new subscriptions are no longer possible,” the statement said, adding that the change could impact performance, security, and compatibility with future versions of iOS and iPad.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew posted a video thanking Trump for his commitment to work with the company to keep the app available in the U.S. and a "strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship."
"We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform. One who has used talk to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process," Chew said.
In an interview with NBC News on Saturday, Trump said he was thinking about giving TikTok a 90-day extension that would allow them to continue operating.
If such an extension happens, Trump – who once favored a TikTok ban – said it would "probably” be announced Monday, the day he is sworn in as president. TikTok CEO is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration with a prime seating location.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long raised concerns about the app, which they see as a national security threat due to its Chinese ownership. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a technology company based in Beijing that operates the well-known video editing apps CapCut and Lemon8, both of which were also unavailable for service on Saturday evening.
The federal law required ByteDance to cut ties with TikTok by Sunday or face a nationwide ban. The statute was passed by Congress in April after it was included as part of a high-priority $95 billion package that provided foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel. President Joe Biden quickly signed it, and then TikTok and ByteDance quickly sued on First Amendment grounds.
While defending the law in court, the Biden administration argued it was concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of U.S. user data that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion.
Officials have also warned the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect. But to date, the U.S. has not publicly provided evidence of TikTok handing user data to Chinese authorities or tinkering with its algorithm to benefit Chinese interests.
On Friday, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that the risk to national security posed by TikTok's ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States.
After TikTok's service darkened, some in China slammed the U.S. and accused it of suppressing the popular app. In a post on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, Hu Xijin, a former editor-in-chief for the Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper Global Times, said, "TikTok’s announcement to halt services in America marks the darkest moment in the development of the internet."
"A country that claims to have the most freedom of speech has carried out the most brutal suppression of an internet application,” said Hu, who is now a political commentator. TikTok does not operate in China, where ByteDance instead offers Douyin, the Chinese sibling of TikTok, who follows Beijing’s strict censorship rules.
After the court ruling, both White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the Biden administration would leave the law’s implementation to Trump, given that his inauguration falls the day after the ban takes effect.
But TikTok said on Friday evening it "will be forced to go dark" if the administration doesn’t provide a "definitive statement" to the companies, such as Apple, Google and Oracle, that deliver its service in the U.S.
Jean-Pierre called TikTok’s demand a "stunt" and said there was no reason for TikTok or other companies "to take actions in the next few days before the Trump administration takes office." But despite those statements from the administration, confusion lingered about what would happen until TikTok began blocking its service.
Under the law, mobile app stores are barred from offering TikTok, and internet hosting services are prohibited from being delivered to American users. Violators could incur fines of up to $5,000 for each user who continues to access TikTok, meaning penalties the companies could face if they continue offering TikTok could total a large sum.
As it's written, experts said the law does not require TikTok to take down its platform, so it's unclear if the company voluntarily shut it down or could not continue the service after losing access to support from its tech providers. The company did not respond to questions sent this week about its plans.
The statute allows the sitting president to extend the deadline by 90 days if a sale is in progress. But no clear buyers have emerged, and ByteDance has previously said it won’t sell TikTok.
Uncertainty over the app's future had sent users, mostly younger people, scrambling to alternatives, including China-based RedNote. Rivals Meta and Snap have seen their share prices rise this month ahead of the ban as investors bet on an influx of users and advertising dollars.
"This is my new home now," wrote a user in a RedNote post, tagged with the words "tiktokrefugee" and "sad."
Minutes after TikTok's U.S. shutdown, other users took to X, formerly called Twitter.
"I didn't really think that they would cut off TikTok. Now I'm sad and I miss the friends I made there. Hoping it all comes back in just a few days," wrote @RavenclawJedi.
U.S. young tennis star Coco Gauff reacted by writing "RIP TikTok USA" and drew a broken heart on a camera lens shortly after reaching the Australian Open quarter-finals on Sunday.
"Hopefully, it comes back. It's really sad. I love TikTok. It's like an escape. I honestly do that before matches.
"I guess it'll force me to read books more and be more of a productive human, probably. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise," she was quoted as saying by Reuters.
On the other hand, NordVPN, a popular virtual private network (VPN) allowing users to access the Internet from servers worldwide, said it was "experiencing temporary technical difficulties."
Web searches for "VPN" spiked in the minutes after U.S. users lost access to TikTok, according to Google Trends.
Users on Instagram fretted about whether they would still receive merchandise they had bought on TikTok Shop, the video platform's e-commerce arm.
Marketing firms reliant on TikTok have rushed to prepare contingency plans in what one executive described as a "hair on fire" moment after months of conventional wisdom saying that a solution would materialize to keep the app running.
At the same time, on Saturday, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perplexity is not asking to purchase the ByteDance algorithm that feeds TikTok users’ videos based on their interests and has made the platform such a phenomenon.
Other investors have also been eyeing TikTok. "Shark Tank" star Kevin O’Leary recently said a consortium of investors that he and billionaire Frank McCourt put together offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash. Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said last year that he was putting together an investor group to buy TikTok.