Sunday marked the day before President Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated for a second term in the White House, and it was also the when Chinese-owned social media app TikTok went dark across the U.S.
Trump’s take on the matter has changed significantly since his first term, at which time he expressed an interest in pursuing a nationwide ban.
Now, TikTok is portraying him as its potential savior, as frustrated users found out when they tried to log on to the app this weekend.
According to Fox Business:
Users who tried to utilize the app on Saturday night received the following message: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
The app gave a shout-out to Trump, saying: “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
The TikTok app was not available on Apple and Google’s app stores by 10:50 p.m. EST, as the stores are prohibited from offering the app under a bipartisan law signed by President Biden last spring that required TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform by Sunday or face a U.S. ban. Internet hosting services are also banned from offering the service to American users.
Trump issued a two-word message Sunday morning on Truth Social: “SAVE TIKTOK!”
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Although it was expected, the TikTok outage nevertheless became a popular topic of discussion on other social media apps on Sunday:
how it feels coming back to twitter cause tiktok is banned and all the other apps aren’t as funny pic.twitter.com/zQBPIfXA3M
— BWAAP (@enocbwaap) January 19, 2025
scrolling twitter because tiktok is gone but every tweet is about tiktok pic.twitter.com/JGbBKxukih
— nova (@comfypill) January 19, 2025
Me going over to sorry ass Instagram reels since TikTok passed away: pic.twitter.com/RjlE9uX6F5
— Mel ✨ (@melbrown00) January 19, 2025
Forbes provided a recent timeline of the TikTok ban, including what Trump could do to save it:
Trump signaled he would “most likely” issue a 90-day extension on the TikTok ban, saying an announcement would “probably” come Monday, though he did not definitively say whether he would do so.
TikTok said in a statement its service will “be forced to go dark” on Jan. 19 unless the Biden administration—which said earlier on Friday TikTok “should remain available to Americans” if “under American ownership”—guarantees Apple, Google and other service providers won’t be punished by supporting the app.
The Supreme Court ruled the law does not violate the First Amendment rights of the app and its users, upholding the federal government’s national security argument and leaving TikTok open to a ban on Jan. 19 unless it is sold to an American company.
Here’s some more coverage Trump and the TikTok situation:
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