TikTok ban: all the news on the app’s shutdown in the US

TikTok says it will go offline on Sunday if Biden doesn’t intervene

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TikTok says it plans to go offline on Sunday, January 19th if the Biden administration doesn’t intervene.

The company confirms earlier reporting that it will be “forced to go dark” on the 19th unless the outgoing administration provides a “definitive statement” assuring its “most critical service providers” that they won’t be held liable for breaking the law. Those providers include Apple and Google, which together distribute TikTok through their app stores, and its hosting partners, which include Amazon and Oracle.

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How TikTok backed itself into a corner

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You’d think that TikTok would have a Plan B by now.

It’s now clear the company never planned for a scenario in which it would lose to the Supreme Court. Maybe it couldn’t, given that the Chinese government ultimately has final say on a sale. Now, TikTok’s leaders are banking on Donald Trump to save them in a last-ditch effort that will unquestionably come with strings attached.

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The Supreme Court ruled on TikTok — and nobody knows what comes next

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The Supreme Court couldn’t have been more direct: the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as applied to TikTok, withstands First Amendment scrutiny and can take effect on January 19th. The court agreed that the government had a compelling national security interest in passing the law and that its rationale was content neutral. The solution proposed — forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok or see it ousted from the US — was ruled appropriately tailored to meet those ends.

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TikTok CEO flatters Trump ahead of US ban deadline

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In his first statement since the Supreme Court upheld a law that could ban TikTok from the US on Sunday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew offered no insight into what would happen to the app in just a few days. Instead, he took the opportunity to appeal to President-elect Donald Trump.

“I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States,” Chew says in a video on the platform. “We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a President who truly understands our platform — one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process.”

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Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban law

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The Supreme Court ruled that the law that could oust TikTok from the US unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it is constitutional as applied to the company.

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the court wrote in a per curiam ruling, which is not attributed to any particular justice. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”

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6 TikTok creators on where they’ll go if the app is banned

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It’s been more than four years since Donald Trump first moved to expel TikTok from the US — and now, just days before a second Trump presidency begins, it just might happen.

President Joe Biden signed legislation last April that officially began the countdown that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the US business. But even afterward, the atmosphere on the video powerhouse was mostly nonchalant, with a handful of stray jokes about “this app disappearing” slotted between the usual fare.

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Biden punts the TikTok ban to Trump

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The Biden administration says it will leave it to incoming President Donald Trump to figure out how to deal with the mess of the TikTok ban, ABC News reports.

“Our position on this has been clear: TikTok should continue to operate under American ownership,” a White House official told ABC News. “Given the timing of when it goes into effect over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement.”

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Will RedNote get banned in the US?

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I’m not the first to note the irony of TikTok users flooding RedNote this week. The TikTok divest-or-ban rule was supposed to drive Americans away from a foreign-owned social network that was subject to influence or data harvesting by the Chinese government. Instead, it pushed them onto a different foreign-owned social network that poses the exact same hypothetical risks — and that might be subject to the exact same kind of ban.

TikTok faces a ban under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed last year by President Joe Biden (who is reportedly experiencing some buyer’s remorse right now). While it mentions TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, by name, it could apply to any company that meets the following criteria:

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How to bulk download and save your TikTok videos

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

There’s a general sense of doom on the TikTok feeds these days, and no wonder: it looks like the video service may be banned in the US as of January 19th. TikTok creators are offering satirical goodbyes to their Chinese spies and wondering how quickly they can download the several hundred — or thousand — videos they have up on the service.

TikTok itself apparently doesn’t like the idea of allowing its creators to bulk download their videos. You can download — in TXT or JSON format — a certain amount of your data, which, according to the support page, “may include but is not limited to your username, watch video history, comment history, and privacy settings.” When I tried it, it did not include my videos. 

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Can Elon Musk really save TikTok?

Laura Normand / The Verge

Chinese officials are reportedly exploring a backup plan for TikTok after the Supreme Court appeared unlikely to save it from a US ban. With TikTok’s legal options nearly exhausted, multiple news outlets are reporting that China is considering an option it previously said it wouldn’t: letting ByteDance sell the app.

The kicker? China is reportedly mulling having President-elect Donald Trump’s favorite tech billionaire, Elon Musk, act either as broker or buyer in the arrangement. Reports from the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg — all citing unnamed sources — indicate that Chinese officials are at least discussing the option of a sale. TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes has called the reports “pure fiction.” The Chinese embassy in the US and Musk’s existing social media company, X, did not respond to requests for comment.

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RedNote: what it’s like using the Chinese app TikTokers are flocking to

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Instead of wallowing in misery about potentially losing access to their favorite short-form video app, many TikTokers are flocking to RedNote, a Chinese social media platform also called Xiaohongshu. I’ve decided to spend some time on the platform myself, and it looks like so-called “TikTok refugees” are excited about interacting with a community mainly comprised of Chinese-speaking users — and vice versa.

Launched in 2013 as a shopping platform, RedNote has grown into one of China’s most popular social apps featuring photos, videos, and written content. Now it’s seeing another spike in users from another part of the globe, with more than 700,000 users joining RedNote in just two days, according to a report from Reuters. The number is still small, at just a fraction of the 150 million Americans TikTok reported were already using the app in early 2023.

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TikTok could get a 270-day extension to make a deal

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TikTok’s luck might not run out just yet, if a new bill extending its January 19th deadline for a sale is approved by Congress.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), announced on the Senate floor Monday that he plans to introduce the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act to give the company an extra 270 days to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance to avoid facing a ban in the US. The bill notably wouldn’t overturn Congress’ initial bill, but it would give the company more time to make a deal, as its legal options dry out. The Supreme Court is expected to decide this week whether the initial law, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, violates the First Amendment, as applied to TikTok — but many court-watchers predict the ruling is unlikely to go in TikTok’s favor.

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The TikTok ban, and what comes next

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Goodbye to our personal Chinese spies. With five days left until the date by which TikTok is to be either sold or banned in the United States, millions of users are reckoning with what happens when one of the internet’s most important media platforms just up and disappears. (Or, more likely, sticks around for a while, consistently gets worse, and then dies with a whimper.)

On this episode of The Vergecast, we reckon with how we got here, and where we go next. The Verge’s Lauren Feiner walks us through the years-long history of the fight over TikTok, and takes us inside last week’s Supreme Court hearing, where the country’s highest court appeared to be in favor of the ban. Even with a few days left, though, the story’s not over: Donald Trump has said he wants to save the app, and he’ll be inaugurated as president the day after the ban is set to go into effect. And now there are rumors Elon Musk might be involved with the app’s future, too. If we’ve learned one thing about the TikTok ban, it’s that it’s always coming and seemingly never actually here. But it sure feels close now.

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‘Goodbye to my Chinese spy’ might be the last great TikTok trend

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TikTokers are coping with the app’s potential ban with an unusual trend: by bidding farewell to their “personal Chinese spy.” The trend, which pokes fun at security concerns surrounding the app, has users thanking their “spy” for surveilling them and filling their For You page with entertaining content, while others proclaim that they’d rather share their data directly with the Chinese government than switch to Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts.

One post, which garnered more than 1.5 million likes, depicts an emotional scene from Squid Game with the caption, “Me saying goodbye to my Chinese spy on the 19th (He perfected my algorithm).” Other TikTokers are speaking — and singing — in Chinese, while some pretend to be the “spies” powering individual algorithms.

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Chinese social media app RedNote tops App Store chart ahead of TikTok ban

Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

RedNote, the Chinese social media app also known as Xiaohongshu, rose to the number one spot on the Apple App Store as a US ban closes in on TikTok. The app offers a mix of pictures, short-form videos, and text posts across “follow,” “explore,” and “nearby” feeds.

A cursory scroll through RedNote’s Explore page shows English-language posts scattered among those written in Chinese. Many American users call themselves “TikTok refugees” in videos, while others write in text posts that they’re in search of a new community because of the potential TikTok ban. Some are even asking questions to Chinese users, such as “What are some popular memes in China?”

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TikTok still seems headed for a ban after its Supreme Court arguments

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After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over a law that could ban TikTok, it looks like one of its last possible lifelines is unlikely to save it from the impending ouster.

TikTok will be banned from the US unless either the Supreme Court blocks the law from taking effect before the January 19th deadline or its China-based parent company, ByteDance, finally agrees to sell it. A sale — and return — of TikTok could happen after the deadline, and President-elect Donald Trump may get creative in trying not to enforce the law once he’s sworn in the next day. But the longer it takes, the shakier things look for TikTok.

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