TikTok ban latest: App will shut down imminently without last-minute extension as users flee to RedNote
TikTok could soon disappear in the United States.
Unless the platform’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, sells TikTok to a U.S.-based company by Sunday, January 19, the app will go dark for millions of U.S. users.
A host of politicians and celebrities – from President-elect Donald Trump to YouTube star Mr. Beast – are offering to save the app before that deadline arrives. TikTok itself hopes that the Supreme Court will intervene and delay or cancel the ban.
TikTok is used by more than 170 million people each month in the U.S. but has faced intense scrutiny over national security concerns due to ByteDance’s proximity to the Chinese government, which the U.S. considers a foreign adversary.
It’s for those reasons that Congress passed bipartisan legislation last year giving TikTok nine months to divest from ByteDance. The legislation only requires that the app be removed from U.S. servers like the App Store and Google – but reports from within TikTok suggest that it will take the app completely offline on Sunday.
