TikTok shut down after the ban was implemented in America
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated he will work with us on a solution to restarting TikTok once he takes office,” the message said, a reference to a pledge by President-elect Donald Trump to “save” the platform. Was given. The company asked its users to stay connected. In the message U.S. The only options given to users are to close the app or click on another option that takes them to the platform's website. There, users are shown the same message and given the option to download their data, an option that TikTok previously said could take several days to process.
Before that announcement was released, TikTok told users in another message that its service would be “temporarily unavailable” and told them it would be closing its U.S. network. Working to restore service “as soon as possible”. But it is not clear how long the platform will remain closed. In an interview with NBC News on Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump said he was thinking about giving TikTok a 90-day extension, which would allow them to continue operating. If such an extension happens, Trump — who once favored a TikTok ban — said it would “probably” be announced on Monday, the day he is sworn in as president. TikTok CEO Xu Ziqiu is expected to attend Trump's inauguration with a prime seating position.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long raised concerns about the app, which they view as a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, the Beijing-based technology company that also operates popular video editing apps CapCut and Lemon8 – both of which were unavailable for service on Saturday evening. Federal law requires ByteDance to sever ties with TikTok by Sunday or face a nationwide ban. The legislation was passed by Congress in April, when it was included as part of a high-priority $95 billion package providing foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel. President Joe Biden quickly signed it, and then TikTok and ByteDance sued over the law on First Amendment grounds.
Defending the law in court, the Biden administration argued that it was concerned about TikTok collecting vast chunks of US user data that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned that the algorithms that promote what users see on the app could be manipulated by Chinese authorities, who could use it to shape content on the platform in a way that Which is difficult to identify. But to date, the US has not publicly provided evidence of TikTok handing over user data to Chinese authorities or tampering with its algorithms to benefit Chinese interests.
On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the national security risk posed by TikTok's ties to China outweighs concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States. After TikTok's service was shut down, some people in China criticized the US and accused it of suppressing the popular app. In a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo, Hu Zijin, former editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper Global Times, said, “TikTok's announcement of halting services in the US is the darkest moment in the development of the Internet.”
Hu, now a political commentator, said, “A country that claims the most freedom of speech has carried out the most brutal suppression of an Internet application.” TikTok doesn't work in China, where ByteDance instead offers Douyin, TikTok's Chinese sibling that adheres to Beijing's strict censorship rules. Following the court's decision, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco both said the Biden administration would leave implementation of the law to President-elect Donald Trump as his inauguration comes a day after the ban goes into effect. Happens after. But TikTok said after the court ruling on Friday that it would be “forced to go dark” if the administration does not make a “definitive statement” to companies like Apple, Google and Oracle, which provide its service in the US. Are.
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