On January 19, 2025, millions of Americans who had a knack for Tick-Tock were in for shock waves that the ban on the app sent all across the country. TikTok users were amazed to find a pop-up message stating the app was temporarily unavailable. The platform that had become a daily practice in the U.S. vanished within moments of its ban. Although the ban seemed incorrect to many, it had been anticipated for years. Donald Trump initially raised concerns about TikTok in 2020, referencing India's earlier ban on the app.
U.S. TikTock users attempting to access the app were greeted with a stark message: "Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now." This ban comes in light of a law signed by President Joe Biden in April, which mandated that TikTok's Chinese-owned parent company,
ByteDance
, sell the app to a non-Chinese owner or face a ban. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld this law on Friday, leading to the app's shutdown in the U.S.
"Important update from TikTok, we regret that a US law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable. We're working to restore our service in the US as soon as possible."
The message from TikTok also mentioned that President Trump, who is set to take office soon, has indicated a willingness to work on a solution to reinstate the app. This development has left many users in the U.S. scrambling to download their data before the app was removed from Apple and Google's app stores.
However, no spokesperson from the president-elect Trump’s team transitioned into immediately responding to comment on Saturday night about the app’s notification praising the president-elect specifically.
The message then directed the users to close the app or learn more. An additional message on the website landing page allowed the users to download their data by logging into their accounts.
The ban on TikTok, which impacts 170 million American users, comes in light of the national security concerns that U.S. officials have raised over the influence of the Chinese government on the company. Furthermore, other apps owned by ByteDance, such as the video editing app Capcut and the lifestyle app Lemon8, were also turned offline and deleted from the U.S. app stores by late Saturday.
As data security and foreign influence concerns led the policymakers to take action against TikTok, netizens shared their reactions when the app went offline.
“Bro tiktok literally started glitching as i was saving videos and BOOM its gone,” one X user wrote.
Another user shared, “The amount of times I’ve already clicked on the tiktok app only to be disappointed is actually embarrassing.” “Just got the “tiktok is banned” pop up, closed the app, then went back to it 3 seconds later out of habit. yeah i’m cooked,” quipped another.
A user on X also posted, “ITS GONE. It’s not even midnight. I still had over an hour of doomscrolling. I wasn’t ready”.
When India banned Tik-Tock over security concerns
On June 29, 2020, the Indian government banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese-owned apps due to concerns over data security. The Indian government accused the ByteDance-owned TikTok of data misuse and espionage. This action by the Indian Government was followed by a deadly clash between Chinese and Indian troops along the Line of Actual Control.
TikTok has suffered the other biggest blow by the ban since India was its largest market with over 200 million active users. The Ministry of Information Technology claims that the apps were blocked because they threatened the sovereignty, integrity, defense, security, and public order in India.
English (US) ·