The Chinese-owned company said it would cut off its services unless the U.S. assures Apple, Google and other companies that they would not be punished for hosting and distributing TikTok.
U.S. officials have long feared that the widely popular short-form video app could be used as a vehicle for espionage.
On Saturday, TikTok users in the United States scrolled through the app for what could be its final hours after the Supreme Court upheld a law that requires ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to sell the app by Sunday or otherwise face a ban.
ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, is required to sell the app to a U.S.-based buyer or face a nationwide ban.
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday, Jan. 17, to uphold a law that would ban the app for the 170 million people who use the app in the U.S. The ruling lines up with decisions other courts have made and sets up the ban to go into effect on Sunday, Jan. 19.
Search engine startup Perplexity AI submitted a bid on Saturday to TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance for Perplexity to reportedly merge with TikTok.
At the time, India was TikTok’s biggest foreign market outside of China, with 200 million users. (For comparison, the U.S. currently has over 170 million TikTok users.) Following military clashes along the disputed border between India and China,
Kesha shared an Instagram post joking that her fans will still have a 'TiK ToK' to listen to after the Supreme Court announced its decision to allow the ban on the social media platform TikTok to go into effect on Jan.
Naysa Dunlap, a 22-year-old Black social worker from Columbus, Ohio, attended the People’s March with her partner, Lessly Argueta, also 22. The couple joined the demonstration because its mission aligned with their shared commitment to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights.
Trump said in an NBC News interview on Saturday that he hasn’t decided what to do but was considering granting TikTok a reprieve.
As the fate of TikTok hangs in the balance, U.S. TikTok users are flocking to Xiaohongshu — making it the top downloaded app in the U.S.