“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US,” the pop-up read. “Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.” American users saw that message on Saturday evening, January 18, 2025, hours before the federal ban was due to take effect. By Sunday afternoon, the app was coming back for many of them.
The shutdown followed the Supreme Court upholding the law, which says TikTok’s China-based parent, ByteDance, must sell the platform or see it forced out of US app stores. Apple’s and Google’s stores pulled the app, and TikTok.com stopped serving American visitors too. DW reported that the company had warned users late Saturday that the service would soon be “temporarily unavailable.”
Then Donald Trump, not yet sworn in, weighed in. On Truth Social he wrote, “I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark,” and promised an executive order on Monday to push back the date the law’s prohibitions take effect. The order, he said, would also confirm that no company would be held liable for having kept TikTok running before it was signed. He added that he wanted the United States to hold a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.
TikTok moved quickly. It said it was restoring service and thanked Trump for giving its service providers the assurance they needed to avoid penalties while serving what it described as over 170 million Americans and over 7 million small businesses. NBC News noted that some users could scroll and post normally less than an hour after the announcement. Others opened the app to a message crediting “President Trump’s efforts” for its return.
Still missing from the app stores
The comeback was partial. NBC News found that anyone who had deleted TikTok, or never installed it, still could not download it. A search in the Apple App Store turned up a banner saying TikTok and other ByteDance apps were not available in the user’s country or region. CapCut, the video editor also owned by ByteDance, went dark the same day, and Meta used the moment to announce a lookalike called Edits.
Washington disagrees with itself
Trump’s promise did not settle much. Incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said the president needed time to study the details and weigh potential buyers, and that Trump would accept continued Chinese ownership if US user data were protected and stored in the United States. House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a different note, predicting Trump would “try to force along a true divestiture.” Johnson said Congress was never worried about the platform itself, but about the Chinese Communist Party.
Senator Tom Cotton, the new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, rejected the idea outright. He said there was “no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’” of the effective date, and warned on X that any company hosting or servicing TikTok could face “hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability” under the law.
Trump’s joint-venture idea also runs into the statute. NBC News pointed out that the law caps “foreign adversary” ownership at 20%, so it was unclear whether ByteDance could keep a larger stake without Congress changing the text. President Joe Biden signed the measure in April 2024, and his administration left enforcement to the incoming team.
The disruption reached beyond the screen. In Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, police arrested a 19-year-old on Sunday on suspicion of arson at a building that housed the office of Representative Glenn Grothman, who had voted for the ban. Police said the man cited the TikTok ban as his motive. The building was empty and no one was hurt.
Sources
- TikTok restores US service after Trump remarks on ban
- Highlights: TikTok says U.S. service will be restored after Trump vows executive order following ban
