TikTok Says It ‘Will Be Forced to Go Dark’ on Sunday Because Biden Has ‘Failed To Provide… Assurances’
TikTok will “be forced to go dark” on Sunday unless its third-party partners get an assurance directly from President Joe Biden that they will not land in trouble for providing services, the company said Friday night.
Biden signed a bipartisan bill last year banning the platform in the U.S. unless its parent company – Chinese-owned ByteDance – divested from the video-sharing platform by Jan. 19.
ByteDance declined to do so, and TikTok’s millions of American users have been offered varying explanations as to what could happen to the app when the deadline hit. On Thursday, a U.S. official said Biden would not enforce the ban, which will take effect the day before he will leave office.
The TikTok Policy X said in a statement the app could cease to function by Sunday:
The statements issued today 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.
On Friday morning the Supreme Court unanimously ruled it would not intervene on behalf of TikTok to stop the ban from taking effect.
After the ruling, Attorney General Merrick Garland celebrated:
The Court’s decision enables the Justice Department to prevent the Chinese government from weaponizing TikTok to undermine America’s national security. Authoritarian regimes should not have unfettered access to millions of Americans’ sensitive data. The Court’s decision affirms that this Act protects the national security of the United States in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution.
In a Friday statement, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “President Biden’s position on TikTok has been clear for months, including since Congress sent a bill in overwhelming, bipartisan fashion to the President’s desk: TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law.”
Jean-Pierre concluded decisions on how to implement the ban on TikTok would fall on President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump has said he would consider an effort to allow TikTok to operate in the US but has not offered any further details on the matter.
