Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images
TikTok says it is officially going dark in the United States now that a federal ban of the app is going into effect. Around 6 PM Pacific time, the app began notifying people in the US, including Verge staffers, with a message that says the ban will “make our services temporarily unavailable.”
The company warned on Friday that it would be forced to go dark if the Biden administration didn’t give assurances to its service providers, like Apple and Google, which can be fined thousands of dollars per US user of TikTok once the ban goes into effect. In response, the Biden administration called TikTok’s threat to go offline a “stunt” and said the situation should be taken up by the incoming Trump administration.
Trump has indicated he plans to extend the deadline for the ban by 90 days via an executive order once he is sworn in on January 20th, though it’s not clear if he will have the power to save TikTok now that it is officially banned. The law that was upheld by the Supreme Court states that TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, must sell its ownership stake in the app for it to continue operating in the US.
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