Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Financial Source ReportFinancial Source Report

Tech News

TikTok starts warning users it will be ‘temporarily unavailable’ in the US as of January 19th

Photo illustration of Tik Tok logo in a ban symbol.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

TikTok is officially going dark in the United States now that a federal ban on the app is set to go into effect on January 19th. Around 6 PM Pacific time, the app began notifying people in the US, including Verge staffers, with a message that said the ban would “make our services temporarily unavailable.” The message goes on to say, “We’re working to restore our service in the US as quickly as possible,” an outcome that will require action from the incoming Trump administration one way or another.

TikTok crashed into this outcome somewhat chaotically — it’s known this was the deadline since Biden signed the bill in April, but the company never appeared to have a backup plan to save its service if the Supreme Court ruled the law was constitutional, which happened on Friday. At the same time, the company was promising advertisers it would sort things out as recently as last night.

A popup in TikTok saying the app will be “temporarily unavailable” as of January 19th.
The message being shown to US TikTok users. A similar message is being shown in CapCut.

The company warned on Friday that it would be forced to go dark if the Biden administration didn’t promise to delay enforcment of the law penalties on TikTok’s service providers, like Apple and Google, which can be fined thousands of dollars per US user once the ban goes into effect. In response, the Biden administration said it had already passed enforcement responsibilities on to the Trump administration and called TikTok’s threat to go offline a “stunt.”

Trump — who kicked off the TikTok ban debate himself during his first term — has indicated he plans to extend the deadline for the ban by 90 days via an executive order once he is sworn in on January 20th, though it’s not clear if he means he will use the provision in the law that allows for a delay if a sale is pending, or if he even has that option once the ban goes into effect. TikTok’s users are decidedly upset, of course — although none of them seem to be pressuring the company to sell as much as they’re pressuring politicians from both parties to rescind the ban.

You May Also Like

Tech News

This is the alert that inadvertently went out to everyone in LA County. | Image: The Verge After two days of dealing with wildfires...

Editor's Pick

American higher education, which is supposed to be about learning truth, has become a bastion of untruth. As higher education loses accountability, it simultaneously...

Tech News

Image: The Verge The AI search engine Perplexity is launching an integration with Tripadvisor that will add more information about hotels. Now, when you...

Tech News

Image: Sony Sony is launching the Xyn (pronounced zin), an “extended reality” headset for creating 3D objects for films, animation, and games. The device,...

Copyright © 2023 FinancialSourceReport.com All Rights Reserved.