Supremum: The App Store and Google Play Shutdown of the US TikTok App Store after the Dark Sag on Saturday
After an opaque and uncertain saga, TikTok went dark on millions of phones across the United States on Saturday evening around 10:30 pm EST. Both the App Store and the Google Play store pulled the app late Saturday. The app still works on your phone, but you will only get a pop-up warning about the ban if you launch it. TikTok users had been bracing for the change, flooding other platforms, including the Chinese social app Xiaohongshu. If you want to continue use of the platform and not give up on the latest skin care hacks, budgeting tips, and pet tortoises, there are some ways to circumvent the ban.
The law also bans companies from providing data hosting services to TikTok. The Information reported that staff of the company were instructed to shut down the server that hosted US TikTok data on Saturday. Oracle did not immediately return a request for comment.
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“It’s a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” says Evelyn Douek, a professor at Stanford Law School who specializes in online speech issues. All nine of the Supreme Court justices disagree with my opinion, so mostly all that matters is going to listen to them. It’s hard to take the national security justification seriously, though, when in recent days presidents past and future as well as members of Congress seem to be backpedaling on whether an immediate shutdown is necessary after all.”
The president said he would leave enforcement of the law to the new administration. The move left the app’s fate in limbo, and TikTok urged the Biden administration Saturday to provide definitive assurance that it wouldn’t enforce the law. Biden’s team suggested TikTok raise its concerns with Trump.
TikTok employees on Blind were wondering if they would have jobs next month, as others went about their businesses as usual. One user wrote that anyone else’s manager was still scheduling meetings next week about new projects without acknowledging the ban. “I have 2025 strategy meetings next week,” another user responded. I’m doing what I’m told. It is comforting in a way.
Rather than putting the pressure on TikTok, PAFACA requires app stores and cloud hosting services to stop doing anything to “distribute, maintain or update” TikTok. As a result of this pressure, Apple, Google, and infrastructure providers must stop new users from getting TikTok, as well as keep the current version of the app up to date. Over time, TikTok would likely degrade and become unusable.
Devashish Gosain, a network analysis researcher and assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, says that in India, TikTok users must remove their Indian SIM card from their phone or use an international SIM card and then run a VPN in order to load content in the app.