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According to a new report, TikTok is planning to shut down its app in the United States unless the Supreme Court stops a federal ban from going into effect on Sunday, January 19th. This means that when hundreds of millions of of the video-sharing site’s users log on this coming Sunday, instead of seeing videos, they will be directed by a pop-up message to a website explaining the ban.
Reuters reports that TikTok shutting down the app completely is not what the federal ban requires. The law banning TikTok only mandates new TikTok downloads not be allowed in Apple or Google’s app stores. Under the law, existing TikTok users could still continue using the app, at least temporarily.
The Information, who first reported the news about TikTok shutting down, also says current users will be given the option to download all their data, including their personal information.
If the ban is upheld, and it currently appears that the U.S. Supreme Court will do so, but President-elect Donald Trump and others lawmakers somehow reverse the ban, TikTok says it will be able to restore service for American users in a relatively short time frame.
As for the company’s more than 7,000 employees in the United States, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, says they will still have jobs. However, the company said in a court filing last month that it estimates that if the ban lasts more than a month in the United States, a third of American users would not return.
Another avenue to get TikTok working again in the United States would be for ByteDance to sell the app to a new owner that the U.S. government approves. Both Elon Musk and James Donaldson, AKA MrBeast, have expressed interest in possibly doing so.
Ironically, President Joe Biden, who signed the legislation into law that would ban TikTok in the United States, because it supposedly poses a national security risk to Americans, was a heavy user of the app during his 2024 Presidential campaign. The Biden administration has also reportedly told certain people in the State Department to continue using TikTok for “public diplomacy.”