UPDATE (1/18): On Friday afternoon, TikTok shared the following update:

[shaownhasan]

“The statements issued today colombia b2b leads by both the Biden White House and the Department of Justice have failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans. Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19.”

The key sticking point here is that while the White House has said that it will not enforce the TikTok ban on Sunday, giving the incoming Trump administration an opportunity to review and enact as they see fit, the technical wording of the bill holds the app facilitators (i.e. Apple and Google) responsible, and could open them up to fines if they continue to support TikTok after the official date.

So at this stage, it seems that TikTok will “go dark” in the U.S., at least for some period of time.


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As expected, the Supreme Court has today announced that it will uphold the ruling of the Senate-approved Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which rules that TikTok, and other apps owned by Chinese corporations operating in the U.S. (with more than a million U.S. users), need to either be sold into U.S.-ownership, or cease operating in the nation.