TikTok announced Sunday that it was restoring service to users in the United States after the popular video-sharing platform went down in response to a federal ban that President-elect Donald Trump said he would try to suspend by decree from his first day in office.
Trump said he plans to issue an order to give TikTok’s China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer before the popular video-sharing platform is subject to a permanent ban on United States. He announced the move on his Truth Social account as millions of US TikTok users woke up to find they could no longer access the TikTok app or platform.
WATCH: Biden at White House says enforcement of TikTok ban will fall to Trump
Google and Apple removed the app from their digital stores to comply with the law, which required them to do so if TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, did not sell its U.S. business by Sunday. The law, passed with broad bipartisan support in April, included heavy fines for non-compliance.
The company that runs TikTok said in an article on “.
Some users reported shortly after TikTok’s statement that the app was working again and that TikTok’s website appeared to be working for at least some users. Even though TikTok was back up and running, it remained unavailable for download in Apple and Google’s app stores.
The law that took effect Sunday required ByteDance to cut ties with the platform’s U.S. operations due to national security concerns posed by the app’s Chinese roots. However, the law gives the sitting president the authority to grant a 90-day extension if a viable sale is underway.
Although investors have made some offers, ByteDance previously said it would not sell. In his Sunday message, Trump said he “would like the United States to have a 50% stake in a joint venture,” but it was not immediately clear whether he was referring to the government or to an American company.
Trump said his order would “extend the deadline before the law’s prohibitions take effect” and “confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going extinct before my order.
“Americans deserve to see our exciting inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations,” Trump wrote.
TikTok’s intermittent availability came after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision Friday that the national security risk posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighs concerns about limiting it. the freedom of expression of the application or its millions of users in the United States. .
When TikTok users in the United States tried to watch or post videos to the platform on Saturday evening, they saw a pop-up message under the title: “Sorry, TikTok is not available at the moment.”
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the United States,” a pop-up message informed users who opened the TikTok app and attempted to scroll through videos on Saturday evening. “Unfortunately, this means you cannot use TikTok at this time.”
The service interruption instituted by TikTok a few hours earlier surprised most users. Experts had said the law as written did not require TikTok to remove its platform, only for app stores to remove it. It was expected that current users would continue to have access to the videos until the app stopped working due to a lack of updates.
“The community on TikTok is like nothing else, so it’s weird to not have it anymore,” content creator Tiffany Watson, 20, said Sunday.
Watson said she denied the impending closure and that with the time she had, she planned to focus on building her presence on Instagram and YouTube.
“There are still people who want beauty content,” Watson said.
The company’s app was also removed Saturday evening from major app stores, including those operated by Apple and Google. Apple told customers with its devices that it was also removing other apps developed by TikTok’s China-based parent company, including one that some social media influencers had promoted as an alternative.
“Apple is obligated to comply with the laws of the jurisdictions in which it operates,” the company said.
Trump’s plan to issue an executive order to spare TikTok on his first day in office reflects the fortuitous timing of the ban and the unusual mix of political considerations surrounding a social media platform that first gained popularity with videos often silly ones featuring dancing and music videos.
During his first term in the White House, Trump issued executive orders in 2020 banning TikTok and Chinese messaging app WeChat, moves that courts later blocked. However, when momentum for a ban emerged in Congress last year, he opposed the legislation. Trump has since credited TikTok with helping him win the support of young voters during last year’s presidential election.
Despite its own role in passing the nationwide ban, the Biden administration has emphasized in recent days that it does not intend to implement or enforce the ban before Trump took office on Monday.
In the nine months since Congress passed the sell-or-ban law, no clear buyer has emerged and ByteDance has publicly insisted it will not sell TikTok. But Trump said he hoped his administration could facilitate a deal to “save” the app.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration with a prime location.
Chew released a video Saturday evening thanking Trump for his commitment to working with the company to keep the app available in the United States and for taking “a strong stance in support of the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.”
Michael Waltz, Trump’s chosen national security adviser, told CBS News on Sunday that the president-elect discussed the demise of TikTok in the United States during a weekend call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. and they agreed to work together on this.”
On Saturday, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity merging Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. operations, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perplexity does not ask to buy the ByteDance algorithm which feeds TikTok users’ videos based on their interests and has made the platform such a phenomenon.
Other investors have also looked at TikTok. “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary recently told a consortium of investors that he and billionaire Frank McCourt offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash. Former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said last year that he was putting together a group of investors to buy TikTok.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long expressed concerns about TikTok, warning that the algorithm that powers what users see is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities. But to date, the United States has not publicly provided evidence that TikTok transmitted its users’ data to Chinese authorities or modified its algorithm to benefit Chinese interests.
Kanis Leung in Hong Kong and Charlotte Kramon in Atlanta contributed to this story.