Summary
TikTok became unavailable in the U.S. on January 20, 2025, after a federal ban targeting Chinese-owned ByteDance took effect.
Apple and Google removed TikTok and other ByteDance apps like CapCut and Lemon8 from their stores, and users saw a message stating the app was no longer accessible.
The law, signed by President Biden and upheld by the Supreme Court, requires ByteDance to sell TikTok or face shutdown.
Trump may grant a 90-day extension, but no buyers have emerged.
The ban sparked debates on censorship, free speech, and national security.
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It’s disappointing to see all this fragmentation among proprietary platforms, even today.
For some reason, we can manage open standards like email and SMS and they continue to be around. However, efforts like Diaspora, ActivityPub, etc…are still not mainstream. And we have people aligning themselves with platforms based on demographics and politics, choosing which platform(s) to be on like the selection of Faux vs. CNN vs. MSNBC.
I still say that if email and HTTP did not predate the commercialization of the Internet being allowed, we probably would have ended up with fragmentation there, too. Hell, Microsoft certainly tried to foul up browser standards. It’s too bad there was not a robust open standard for instant messaging that pre-dated the commercialization. That’s just as fragmented as “social media” is…
Where it’s covered in all political plights
Where the swindlers swindle the night
Impossible comes true, manipulating you
Oh, this is the greatest show
It’s going to be sold to Musk in 3… 2…
The message the TikTok app displays stoops to a new low to pander to Trump.
It’s no wonder why Trump all of a sudden wants to “save” TikTok:
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-tiktok-courted-conservatives-before-trumps-win
https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/tiktok-and-white-supremacist-content/
This one is especially damning:
TikTok is spending $50,000 on an inauguration party honoring influencers who helped Donald Trump spread his campaign message, according to the party organizer — and it’s scheduled for Sunday, the deadline for the company to spin off from its China-based owner or be banned in the U.S.
CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend.
Oh, come on only 50k for dear leader? The Zuck and Tim Apple donated a million
Well, Trump got a lot more from the guy who has a 15% stake in the company during the election.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/donald-trump-jeff-yass
lmao if I didn’t need enough reason to stick with rednote.
It’s crazy how a ban set for January 20th went into affect on January 18th.
TikTok voluntarily went dark on the 19th, they’ve been saying publicly that without clarity from the Supreme Court that they would, which is interesting, because if they didn’t I have no idea how the US would enforce the ban.
“stop distributing your free app in my country by telling the two major companies based in my country to stop it or I’ll level massive fines against you and them”
Delisting is not a ban though, and who’s going to force a Chinese company to pay fines levied by America? Delisting is the most they could do, use a VPN or sideloading and boom, you’d have tiktok again.
Yeah, but how many people know how to do that?
Not as many people as there are on there now for sure, but likely enough to tell a good portion of the rest how to do it. Russian and Chinese netizens are intricately familiar with VPN’s and networking because their governments create environments where they need to be, people cite this when they talk about how so many prolific hackers come from those countries since from the beginning they’ve needed to circumvent security to surf the web. I wouldn’t bet against something similar happening here if the conditions were right, maybe not to the same extent, but I’d imagine we’d be surprised how many do make it over that barrier.
I dunno. Getting people to “choose their instance” on Mastodon seems to be something insurmountable for a lot of people.
I was thinking about that too and I think the motivation is jussst barely different enough thanks to FOMO. Mastodon just doesn’t have the same amount of content as TikTok, especially to those already on TT. If Americans who used to use the app see the creators they used to follow bypassing the ban, they will feel like they’re missing something if they don’t, as opposed to what awaited them behind the hurdles of the fediverse was all unknown to them with little FOMO unless they already knew people on here. I could absolutely be wrong, but seeing Americans run to redbook tells me at least some of them are fighting, maybe aimlessly so, but still trying.
They have must have assets in the US, as they have 7,000 US employees. So they could easily just go after those.
You’re right and the US can snatch those for sure but let’s say Tiktok wasn’t planning on bribing Trump and instead decided to be non compliant and force the US to execute the ban somehow. Other than Servers and Real estate, I’d imagine all liquid would be long gone into China and the continued data from users would outweigh the cost of those seized assets, even with many users not being able to manage the technological hurdle of loading a delisted app
But there’s loops: https://loops.video/
Is there an android app yet?
There is but you have to download it from their website. So it’s jank. Also no we interface is bad for getting new users.
Is that why I see all The Kidz ™ playing outside?
/s
I told y’all two days ago this was horrible optics for Democrats, this wasn’t hard to see coming.
Oh yall are mad now. I’m not the one who pitched Trump a softball. Save it for your representative. Schumer saw it coming too.
I don’t see how THIS does anything to his legacy. It’s already pretty marred because of his stance on Israel.
I agree with you, in comparison this is really small . . . for those of us paying attention. I think it’s an unfortunate state of the nation where more people will notice this than the genocide financing, which seems quite bipartisan in Washington. It doesn’t surprise me most Americans make more fuss over the app than the weapons, and the scramble and sudden coverage of it despite the ban looming for almost half a year seem to show that. Some people (and many politicians) will also unfortunately see Bidens Israel stance as a good thing no matter what.
