TikTok stopped working in the US late on Saturday, shortly before a federal ban on the Chinese-owned short-video app was due to take effect.
The app was no longer available on Apple’s iOS App Store or Google’s Play Store. The US Congress passed a law in April mandating that parent company ByteDance either sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner or face a total shutdown. It chose the latter.
TikTok said that divestment “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally”. The company held that line until the very end.
The app’s disappearance has been five years in the making. Donald Trump first proposed a ban on TikTok in mid-2020 via executive order, which did not succeed. Various members of Congress proposed measures that would do the same, only one passed. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act became law, mandating TikTok be sold or be banned.
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. 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,” a message to users attempting to use the app said.
TikTok’s attorney told the supreme court that the app would “go dark” on 19 January. After TikTok disappears from app stores, preventing new downloads and updates, it will gradually obsolesce while the ban remains in place. Without regular maintenance, the app’s smooth functionality will suffer glitches and may become vulnerable to cyber-attacks. TikTok itself may shut off access even to users who have already downloaded the app to apply political pressure, per multiple reports.
Maybe, although Trump’s initiation of the ban in 2020 and its culmination under a bipartisan effort makes it seem that this is not a party issue but a function of state power responding to perceived threats to its hegemony, maybe economic, cultural, or political. This underscores the Marxist understanding that capital ultimately unites in opposition to the interests of the working class.
Yet when the lame duck admin was at its lamest, it voiced what is apparently now bipartisan opposition to the ban.
Anyway, that isn’t to do with Bytedance’s response. It isn’t a mask-off moment for them to lament those who have materially damaged their interests in favour of those apparently saving them. The flip-flop is on the part of the politicians. Presumably if Bytedance existed under MLism, they would still desire to exist.
Yeah who knows. As of now things look like a PR stunt