TikTok goes dark as US ban takes effect

Popular social media website TikTok abruptly, but expectedly, went dark for US users just hours before a federal ban on the platform was set to take effect. The app is no longer available on both Apple’s and Google’s respective app market ecosystems.

Users of the platform who attempted to launch the app were greeted with the following message late Saturday evening:

“Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now.”

“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.,” the message said. “Unfortunately that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”

The company’s leadership however is notably optimistic that the downtime will be short lived, with another message reading:

“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office”

The Supreme Court on Friday voted unanimously the uphold the ban, with separate concurrences coming from both justices Sotomayer and Gorsuch. The ban in question however is still a hotly debated topic with implications spanning from violations of the first amendment on one end, to exposing the U.S. to immense national security risk on the other. ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is a Chinese tech giant with a history of tangled affairs with the Chinese government.

What reasons, if any, would Trump have to pause or unravel the ban entirely?