TikTok Warns US Users of ‘Temporary’ Ban Beginning Sunday

Good news and bad news, TikTok fans.

As of Saturday afternoon, TikTok is now sending notice to US users that it will indeed be forced to become “temporarily” unavailable in the region due to the US government’s forced sell-off laws.

As you can see, TikTok says it’s working to fix the situation, but at this stage there’s no way around the law, which will take effect at midnight tonight.

TikTok’s last hope for a legal remedy was the Supreme Court ruling support the rule of law in “The Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by a Foreign Enemy Act” on Friday. Which means TikTok must either be sold to an American company or shut down in the US, and given the short turnaround time, the latter is now the only option for the Chinese-owned app.

And like us reported recentlythis will also apply to CapCut:

The good news is that both TikTok and CapCut (and Lemon8, too) will soon be available again to Americans, and President-elect Donald Trump notes that he will “most likely” give the company a 90-day grace period negotiate an alternative solution and give Trump himself a chance to make a new deal.

Reports have suggested there may not be a break in the app at all, and the Biden administration wants to do just that avoid account enforcementand leave it to the incoming Trump team to deal with. But according to the text of the law, it is the app stores that are responsible for forcefully removing an app. And since Biden’s team could not give them guarantees that they will not be punished for this, there is no other option but to terminate.

Which sets the stage for Trump to save him.

Trump, of course, is now a fan of TikTok, having become “big star” in the appand as such, he wants to find a way to continue it in the US, but since Trump isn’t sworn in until Monday, he can’t really do anything to stop the law from going into effect that day before.

Although that’s apparently why TikTok is now describing the situation as temporary, as Trump seems to have promised to reinstate the app as soon as possible.

It’s also worth noting that it will be TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

Also, some clarity: Trump didn’t start the ball on an eventual ban on TikTok by trying to ban the app himself back in 2020.

To clarify, back in 2020 Trump asked for it ban TikTok in the US not out of national security concerns, but to get revenge on China for the spread of COVID-19. To do that, Trump issued an executive order banning the appbut the justification for doing so proved insufficient, and the Trump administration’s approach lacked the evidence needed to enforce the ban on the app.

Which is why the Biden administration opted out of the original TikTok sale in 2021but even then, security agencies were assessing TikTok’s threat and appeared to have already found evidence suggesting China-based groups were using the app to seed pro-Chinese content and/or extract user information.

We don’t know exactly what they found because they decided to withhold all the details outside the public domain. But it was this secondary incentive that ultimately led to the formation of the now-approved TikTok sell-off bill.

So while Trump tried to ban it in 2020, and it seems like a huge turn for him to go from the app’s arch-nemesis to its savior, that narrative isn’t entirely accurate. Those two procedures were separate and had different explanations and justifications.

However, the final outcome now appears to pave the way for Trump to take control and either formulate a new deal to sell the app to a US company or consortium, or somehow negotiate a new deal with China to keep it operating normally.

It looks like Trump will have to orchestrate some new situation to calm the rule of law here, and that will likely lead to TikTok falling into the hands of one of his supporters. But in any case, given his affection for the app, it now appears that TikTok will only be gone for a few days, before returning to the US

So, no need to reshape your strategy, no need to rethink your influencer marketing plans. TikTok is coming back, but starting tomorrow it won’t work for US users.