Written by Sheila Dang and Jaspreet Singh
(Reuters) – TikTok stopped serving 170 million Americans late on Saturday after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled against TikTok’s request to avoid a possible ban on the app.
The ban is the final result of a 2024 law passed on national security issues that required TikTok parent ByteDance to sell the popular short video app or see it shut down in the United States on Jan. 19.
It was not clear how long the ban would last as President-elect Donald Trump, who took office on Monday, said he would try to find a “political solution” to the issue so that the program would work in the United States.
On Sunday, Trump said on Truth Social: “SAVE TIKTOK!”
Here is what is happening now.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OPERATING SYSTEM?
New users will not be able to download TikTok from the Apple (NASDAQ:) and Google (NASDAQ:) app stores and existing users will not be able to update the app, because the law prohibits any party from continuing to download or modify TikTok. request.
It was not immediately clear whether TikTok’s business partners, including Oracle (NYSE:), which provides TikTok’s cloud infrastructure services and stores its US user data, have suspended services.
TikTok plans to continue paying its 7,000 employees in the US, company leadership said in an internal memo.
HOW WILL USERS BE CONTACTED?
170 million TikTok users in the US can’t use the app even if they don’t delete it from their phones.
As of Sunday, US users hoping to access TikTok through virtual private networks, or VPNs, which can hide a user’s Internet protocol, or IP, address and location, have been unsuccessful.
Other Chinese social media apps such as RedNote, known in China as Xiaohongshu, are expected to continue to gain popularity among US users.
Content creators who have built businesses on their TikTok following have urged their followers to find them on other channels such as Instagram and YouTube.
WILL ADVERTISERS DO IT?
Advertisers rushed to prepare emergency plans before the ban, fearing that the ban would jeopardize their campaigns on the platforms. One marketing executive described it as a “hot hair” moment in the ad world, after months of conventional wisdom saying a solution would be in place to keep the short video app running.
TikTok has continued to introduce new features to advertisers, such as a tool introduced in beta mode that will make it easier to create, modify and add ads in bulk.
The ban puts more than $11 billion in annual ad spending in the US up for grabs, according to a forecast by marketing group WARC Media.
“Wall Street will be watching the results of Meta (NASDAQ:), Snap, and others to see who benefits from this rapid change in spending,” said Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency Code3.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE US-CHINA TRADE RELATIONSHIP?
The ban on TikTok could exacerbate trade tensions between the US and China that were already simmering after Beijing imposed restrictions on the export of advanced American semiconductor technology.
However, “such a ban would not be surprising as it has been under discussion for five years,” said Sean Ennis (NYSE: ), a professor at the University of East Anglia.
Trump could try to use executive action to protect TikTok during his four years in office, but he could use the risk of him changing his position to extract something important from China, analysts at LightShed Partners said.
Reversing the ban would give Trump leverage to negotiate with China, analysts say.
WHO CAN BUY?
TikTok has repeatedly said it will not be sold to ByteDance.
That did not deter billionaire businessman Frank McCourt, former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. His consortium valued the app without its algorithm at about $20 billion.
Some media sources have reported that Chinese officials are in talks to sell TikTok’s US operations to billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s biggest financial backer.
TikTok called those reports “mythical”.
Hours before the ban went into effect on Saturday, US search engine Perplexity AI submitted a bid to merge with TikTok’s US operations, according to a source familiar with the matter.
