TikTok warned its US users late Saturday that its platform would be “temporarily unavailable” beginning Sunday, Jan. 19, to comply with a federal law that effectively bans the app in the US.
“We regret that a U.S. law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable,” TikTok’s message to users read.
“We’re working to restore our service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned.”
In an interview with NBC on Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump said he would likely grant TikTok a 90-day extension to work out a deal with the government and keep the app up and running.
The law itself doesn’t outright ban TikTok. Rather, it prohibits users from accessing the platform through app stores like those run by Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and cloud services unless parent company ByteDance sells itself to an owner that is not controlled by a country considered by the US to be adversarial.
Congress has accused ByteDance of having close ties to the Chinese government and alleges that the Chinese Communist Party could force the company to provide it with information on US users or otherwise spread propaganda on the platform.
But the outcry from users and TikTok’s backers has forced President Joe Biden and Trump to respond. Even if Trump assures Apple and Google that his administration won’t enforce the law, it’s not guaranteed that it will do so in the future. And each time the companies don’t comply with the law they’d have to pay a fine of $5,000 each time a user accesses the social media app.
Trump will have to either convince Congress to overturn the ban or find some other way to work around it if he wants to keep the service up and running, and neither of those is simple.
The biggest winner could also be one of TikTok’s long-term critics, Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In particular, Instagram, owned by Meta, could see a sizable uptick in advertiser dollars if TikTok bites the dust.
“In general, it’s a good thing for Meta,” William Blair research analyst Ralph Schackart told Yahoo Finance. “We estimate in a note potentially 60% to 70% of TikTok spend could move to Instagram and it monetizes at around 3x the rate of TikTok.”
Social media companies have been chasing TikTok’s formula in an attempt to copy the social media platform’s success for some time. Reddit (RDDT), for example, offers its own short-form video feed that could entice former TikTok users looking for a broader kind of social media site complete with various message boards and communities.
