TikTok ban highlights: App says service will be restored in U.S. after Trump vows to issue executive order

A 19-year-old man who was arrested in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, today for allegedly setting fire to a building cited the TikTok ban as his motive, according to the city’s police department.

The building included the office of Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., who voted last April in favor of the bill to ban TikTok. Fond du Lac officials said in a news release today that “the building was unoccupied at the time and no injuries were reported.”

“Acts of violence, in any form are not tolerated, and we remain committed to protecting the safety and well-being of our community,” Police Chief Aaron Goldstein said in a news release.

An investigation into the incident is in its preliminary stages, the police department and city said in a news release. The man, whose name has not been released, “is being held at the Fond du Lac County Jail and a charge of arson is being referred to the Fond du Lac County District Attorney's Office,” according to the news release.

The ban on ByteDance apps means CapCut, one of the most popular short-form video editing apps in U.S. app stores, was also made unavailable today. The same day, Meta introduced its own CapCut lookalike: an app called Edits.

“Now there’s a lot going on in the world right now, and no matter what happens, we think it’s our job to create the most compelling creative tools for those of you who make videos — for not just Instagram, but for platforms out there — as we can,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in a video on Instagram and Threads.

Mosseri said the app won’t launch until February and that the first version will be “incomplete.” Starting today, he said, the app is available for preorder in the Apple App Store and is coming soon to Android as well.

Some American TikTok users opening the app are now receiving yet another pop-up message, this time a cheerful “Welcome back!”

“Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!” the message states. “You can continue to create, share, and discover all the things you love on TikTok.”

Though access to the app has been restored for many U.S. users, those who don’t have the app on their devices still appear unable to download it through the Apple and Android app stores.

When searching for TikTok in the Apple App Store, a banner message states: “TikTok and other ByteDance apps are not available in the country or region you’re in.”

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is rebutting Trump’s assurances that U.S. service providers “will face no penalties” for providing TikTok to Americans. He is the new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is slated to meet Monday.

“Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs,” he wrote on X. “Think about it.”

In his Truth Social post this morning, Trump had written that his executive order tomorrow will “confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”

For some U.S. users, the TikTok app appears to already be working again, less than an hour after TikTok announced it would be restoring service. These users are able to scroll and post as normal.

TikTok is the most commonly used platform by brands that engage in influencer marketing, according to a recent report by the Influencer Marketing Hub, which also found that 50% of influencer marketers believe TikTok delivers the best return on investment for short-form video content.

It has become a giant in the evolving creator economy, which includes millions of social media personalities who make money through brand deals, platform monetization and audience subscriptions.

Research from Goldman Sachs last year predicted that the total market opportunity of the creator economy could reach $480 billion by 2027.

Trump has floated the idea of a joint venture for TikTok, with the U.S. owning 50%, but even that idea faces a potential hurdle under last year's bipartisan law requiring a sale of the app.

The law includes a 20% cap for "foreign adversary" owners, so it's not immediately clear whether TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, could exceed that ownership share without a change in the law.

The law defines "controlled by a foreign adversary" in several different ways, but one definition is: "an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake."

(Subparagraph (A) refers to "a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country.")

Congress, of course, could change the law.

Although TikTok has said it will restore service to Americans in the wake of Trump’s assurances, this does not overturn the law that is still in effect.

Even if TikTok is given an extension, as Trump has vowed to do in an executive order tomorrow, the law still forces ByteDance to eventually sell the app to a non-Chinese owner — something the parent company has indicated no interest in doing.

TikTok said in its latest statement that it “will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States,” which could entail working together on a deal with U.S. lawmakers to amend or overturn the law.

The U.S. isn't the first country to limit access to TikTok.

One of the biggest countries to make TikTok unavailable is China itself, where users are segregated into ByteDance’s domestic version of the app, Douyin.

In 2020, India banned TikTok along with a slew of other Chinese-created apps, citing similar data privacy reasons as the United States. Other countries that have banned TikTok include Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Still others have attempted or implemented temporary bans in the past, and many more around the world have banned TikTok on government devices, much like the United States did before implementing a nationwide ban.

Some international users on TikTok are leaving flower emojis and “RIP” comments on the pages of American TikTokers, according to screenshots floating around online.

As the rest of TikTok grapples with the sudden loss of American users — who have had a major presence on the app as one of its largest user bases — some are already mourning the culture they’ve cultivated on the platform, noting that it feels quieter without them.

Others are joking about taking the chance to make fun of Americans “behind their backs,” noting in jest that they can finally stop catering to American units of measurement and date formats.

TikTok said today that it would be restoring service to U.S. users after blocking it the evening before.

In a statement, TikTok said its services were coming back online after President-elect Donald Trump provided assurances necessary to the company’s service providers.

Read the full story here.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew was invited by President-elect Donald Trump's team to inauguration. He is expected to attend and sit with other tech executives tomorrow, NBC News previously reported.

He's expected to be joined by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

President-elect Donald Trump clarified his stance today on TikTok, writing in a post on Truth Social that he’d like to bring the app back online in the U.S. as soon as possible, even if there’s no deal yet for a U.S.-based company to buy the app.

“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.” 

“Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations,” Trump added.

Trump said he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” and confirmed that the move would “save TikTok.” NBC News has asked the Trump transition team for clarification on whether the president-elect meant that ownership should be held by a U.S.-based company or the U.S. government itself.

Read the full story here.

Some TikTok functionality appeared to be restored just before midday, with the platforms' videos accessible through desktop and mobile web browsers.

It's unclear if this is a glitch or a change made by TikTok. NBC News has reached out to the company for comment.

Upon opening the app today, users were greeted by a shortened pop-up message about TikTok being “temporarily unavailable,” which reads: “We’re working hard to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience.”

It’s a change from a longer message that appeared on users’ TikTok screens last night, which had notably mentioned Trump by name: “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”

As they gear up for the reality of losing part of their regular incomes, some TikTok creators have already gotten started on building their followings elsewhere.

Fashion and beauty creator Kalita Hon, who said about 70% of her income comes from TikTok, told NBC News in December that she plans to shift her focus to Instagram Reels, with the hope that fashion brands are more likely to move there, as well, in the wake of a ban. 

But she said she doesn’t expect to bring her 245,000 TikTok followers with her, because the audience is “very specific” to that platform.

Cole Mason, a co-founder of the creator marketing company Pearpop, also previously told NBC News that he’s optimistic creators will adapt should there be a ban.

“Creators will be a powerful force behind our culture, with or without TikTok,” he said in an email. “Ultimately, where creatives go, audiences and brands follow.” 

Read the full story here

U.S. TikTok users hoping to find a workaround to access the banned app are finding that virtual private networks are no help, hinting that the company has taken extra precautions to ensure Americans are not able to avoid the ban.

Virtual private networks, more commonly known as VPNs, route internet traffic through servers located around the world. Using VPNs can help users sidestep government and corporate internet restrictions, though their security promises can sometimes be overstated.

Many on social media posted Saturday night into Sunday morning that their attempts to use VPNs to access TikTok were unsuccessful, and attempts made by NBC News were similarly thwarted.

It is not entirely clear how TikTok has instituted the ban at the technical level, but the failure of VPNs is notable because they proved effective when India banned TikTok.

Read the full story here.

In a December court filing, TikTok said that U.S. small businesses and social media creators would lose $1.3 billion in revenue and earnings in just one month if the popular app is effectively shut down in the U.S.

“Those numbers would only increase if the shutdown extends for more than a month,” said Blake Chandlee, president of global business solutions for TikTok, in the filing. “Almost two million creators in the United States would suffer almost $300 million in lost earnings, and TikTok itself would lose 29% of our targeted global advertising revenue for 2025."

He said that as of November 2024, more than 7 million U.S. accounts used TikTok to do business.

Read the full story here

Apple says TikTok and other apps developed by its Chinese owner ByteDance and its subsidiaries are now unavailable to users in the U.S.

In a statement released yesterday ahead of the TikTok ban, the tech giant said that video editing app CapCut, social lifestyle app Lemon8 and card game app MARVEL SNAP are among those that will not be available for download or updates on the App Store.

“Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,” the statement said, before referring to the TikTok ban law, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

TikTok Studio, in which users can schedule posts for TikTok, AI art generator Hypic, and the business-focused app Lark — Team Collaboration are also among those that will not be downloadable for U.S. users. For those who have already downloaded the apps, the platforms will continue to work, but cannot be updated, the statement said. Those visiting the U.S. will also have limited access to features until they leave the country.

If the TikTok ban does go through, who wins? Who loses? Watch NBC News' Stay Tuned team break it down.

The TikTok ban has already gotten the “Saturday Night Live” treatment. 

During the “Weekend Update” segment of the most recent episode, comedian Michael Longfellow roasted the ban, asking castmate Michael Che, “We’re just banning things because they’re from China?”

“You know who else was from China?” Longfellow quipped. “That’s right, Jesus Christ.”

Longfellow also poked fun at users’ addiction to the app.

“What do I do at work? What do I even watch during a movie?” Longfellow said. “I’m moving to China.”

Before the app went dark Saturday, musician Kesha was among those posting a video tribute to the platform.

In her post, she stares at the camera while five seconds of her hit song "TiK ToK" plays. The lyrics are as follows: "Don’t stop, make it pop / DJ, blow my speakers up / Tonight, I’ma fight / ‘Til we see the sunlight / Tick-tock on the clock / But the party don’t stop, no / Oh, whoa, whoa-oh."

"TikTok may be temporary but TiK ToK is forever," she wrote in the text over the video.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slammed the TikTok ban on Saturday, saying there was “no real information” presented to lawmakers showing that the Chinese-owned app was a national security threat. 

Ocasio-Cortez, who voted against the ban, said on social media that during briefings about the app, she did not feel any clear evidence suggested the platform was dangerous.

“Very high ranking members on the House Foreign Affairs Committee came to me after the briefing, and they were very shocked and pretty surprised at the lack of substantive information in the briefing,” she said in a story post to her Instagram account. “They were genuinely expecting there to be some real or compelling intelligence shared that would substantiate the argument, and there just wasn’t.”

Additionally, the Democratic lawmaker, who has long been an avid social media user, said the bill was brought to the House floor “very fast.” She went on to call for greater privacy laws, blasted “big tech” and criticized lawmakers who labeled the bill a “forced sale” rather than a ban.

“The rushed nature of this bill is now evidenced by the fact that both the Biden and Trump administrations are now looking to see if there’s any way to reverse or stall it,” she said.

The TikTok ban has received bipartisan support from lawmakers. In April, the House voted 360-58 to force TikTok to divest or be banned, while the bill received an overwhelming 79-18 vote in the Senate, where it was also packaged with foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday dispelled the notion that President-elect Donald Trump would bring TikTok back early in his second term without the company’s willingness to sell to a U.S.-based owner.

“I think we will enforce the law,” Johnson told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday, a day after Trump told NBC News he would “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day extension to operate in the U.S.

Johnson’s remarks come just hours after TikTok halted operations in the U.S., cutting user access to the app. At the same time, Apple, Google and Microsoft removed the app from app stores, preventing new users from downloading it.

Shortly before Johnson’s comments, Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., broke with Trump, too, celebrating the app’s ban that went into effect Sunday.

“We commend Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for following the law and halting operations with ByteDance and TikTok, and we encourage other companies to do the same. The law, after all, risks ruinous bankruptcy for any company who violates it,” Cotton and Ricketts wrote in a statement.

Read the full story here.

Perplexity AI officially made a play for TikTok on Saturday, submitting a bid to its parent company, ByteDance, to create a new merged entity combining Perplexity, TikTok U.S. and new capital partners, CNBC has learned.

The new structure would allow for most of ByteDance’s existing investors to retain their equity stakes and would bring more video to Perplexity, according to a source familiar with the situation, who asked to remain anonymous due to the confidential nature of the potential deal.

Perplexity AI, the artificial intelligence search engine startup competing with OpenAI and Google, started 2024 with a roughly $500 million valuation and ended the year with a valuation of about $9 billion, after attracting increasing investor interest amid the generative AI boom — as well as controversy over plagiarism accusations.

Read the full story here.

In December, President-elect Donald Trump had filed a brief asking Supreme Court justices to temporarily block the law banning TikTok so that when he takes office he can “pursue a political resolution” to the dispute.

One of Trump’s options to help save TikTok would be to grant a 90-day extension for the platform to continue its effort to find an American buyer — a provision specifically written into the law.

However, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, previously said it will not approve a sale of the app. If ByteDance were to approve a sale, there are U.S. buyers willing to purchase TikTok, including billionaire business executive Frank McCourt.

Gautam Hans, a professor of law at Cornell University, told NBC News earlier this month that Trump could also direct the Justice Department not to enforce the law, meaning that it would not prosecute Google and Apple for hosting the app in their respective app stores. But Hans didn’t think the legal counsel for either company would be comfortable defying the law on Trump’s word alone.

Read the full story here.

After TikTok went dark for U.S. users on Sunday, several popular influencers from the app set their sights on popular Chinese platform RedNote, or Xiaohongshu.

Big names like "Real Housewives" star Bethenny Frankel, YouTuber Brittany Broski and makeup artist Manuel Gutierrez Jr., known as Manny MUA, have begun posting on the Chinese platform. Food influencer Logan Moffitt, best known for his viral “entire cucumber” salad recipes, internet personality Tana Mongeau and “The Hills” star Spencer Pratt were also among those making the move.

There are a handful of apps that appear to have captivated American TikTok users who have been looking for an alternative in the case of a ban.

• RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, is a social media platform that includes images, short-form videos, community building tools, shopping and more. It is owned by Shanghai-based Xingyin Information Technology.
• Some TikTok creators and users have also mentioned several emerging apps, such as Clapper and a yet-to-launch app called Neptune, as options.
• Meta also stands to gain new users for its TikTok-like product, Reels.

Charlie Puth, who documented the creation of his 2022 album "Charlie" on TikTok, bid the app farewell in a video posted Friday.

The video, which was viewed more than 3.6 million times before the app went dark, features the artist playing his 2015 song "See You Again" on the piano.

In just the past week, the Chinese platform RedNote has welcomed more than 700,000 new users, signaling a major shift in social media trends.

Apps for virtual private networks — more commonly called VPNs — are surging in Apple's App Store.

VPNs allow people to route their internet traffic through servers often in other countries as a way to sidestep censorship and get around bans. It's not clear if those apps are helping users access TikTok, as many in the U.S. have said on social media that the app is unavailable even through a VPN.

During his first term, Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok. But during his 2024 campaign, he joined the platform and changed his position on the app, saying he would “save TikTok” in a June video.

Now, the outgoing Biden administration has said it would leave enforcement of the ban to Trump. In a video posted to social media (including TikTok, before it went dark), TikTok CEO Shou Chew thanked Trump "for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States."

In response to the Supreme Court's Friday ruling, Trump issued a statement on Truth Social, writing, “The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”

After a bipartisan bill to remove TikTok from app stores in the U.S. or force its sale passed last year, some officials in Washington now want to delay the ban from going into effect.

Instead, they said they want to see a delay to allow TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, more time to sell the app to a U.S. buyer.

Read the full story here

TikTok confirmed on Friday that it planned to go dark, saying in a post on X that it needs more clarity from the Biden administration and the Department of Justice regarding the ban that’s scheduled to go into effect today.

“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,” the company wrote.

Read the full story here.

In recent months, hundreds of TikTok users have lamented the looming ban, posting videos showcasing their anxiety, anger and grief as they prepare to lose access to it.

“There’s going to have to be sacrifices made, and it obviously does make me worry about everyday life, like groceries, rent, all those sorts of stuff,” Jonathan Miller, a songwriter and music commentator who has been a full-time creator since 2010, told NBC News in December.

Read the full story here

Ahead of the ban, TikTok pushed some users to its sister app Lemon8. The app, which rose in the App Store charts this month, has a variety of features including an Instagram-like photo option, TikTok-like videos that appeal to users’ specific sensibilities and interests, and a Pinterest-like interface that allows users to interact with different types of content at once. 

But on Saturday evening, Lemon8, as well other ByteDance-owned apps CapCut and Gauth, were also unavailable to many U.S. users.

That's because the law, which was upheld by the Supreme Court on Friday, stated that any of ByteDance’s subsidiaries could also be banned.

On Saturday, some TikTok users moved to rival social media platforms to commiserate over the app’s shutdown.

The popular Liza Minnelli Outlives X account weighed in, alerting followers that the actor had outlived the app, “forcing many people to find new ways to waste time.”

One user compared TikTok to the Detroit Lions because they were both “eliminated by Washington.”

President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in a phone interview Saturday that he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a potential ban in the U.S. after he takes office Monday.

“I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at. The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” Trump said in the phone interview.

“If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday,” he said.

Read the full story here.

TikTok greeted users opening the app Saturday night with the message, “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now.”

“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.,” the message continued. “Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”

Read the full story here.