The application stopped working a little more than an hour before the law prohibiting it would have come into force.
Kai Jääskeläinen,
Topias Peltonen
The social media short video service Tiktok has stopped operating in the United States. The application has also been removed from the Apple and Google application stores.
Tiktok stopped working on Saturday night a little over an hour before midnight EST. The law prohibiting the application would have entered into force at the end of the day.
For those trying to use Tiktok, the following message appeared in the application: “Sorry, Tiktok is not available now. The law banning Tiktok has come into force in the United States. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use Tiktok right now.”
Additionally, the message says that “fortunately, President Trump has indicated that he will work with us to work out a solution to reintroduce Tiktok when he takes office. Stay tuned!”
Returning to the presidency of the United States Donald Trump said on Saturday in an interview with the news channel NBC News that he is likely to grant a 90-day extension to the sale of Tiktok. Trump said he would announce his decision on Monday, which is also his inauguration day.
Offers were made until the last minute
The US Supreme Court decided on Friday to uphold a law that bans the use of Tiktok in the US unless its Chinese parent company Bytedance sells it to a US owner.
The reason for banning Tiktok is national security. Decision-makers in the United States have been worried, among other things, by the fact that Tiktok, owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, collects a lot of data from its users, which could be used in Chinese state espionage operations.
There were offers to buy Tiktok until the last minute. For example, on Saturday, an offer made by an artificial intelligence company called Perplexity AI hit the headlines.
Tiktok had about 170 million users in the United States.
Other apps owned by Bytedance, such as Capcut for cutting videos and Lemon8, which focuses on lifestyle content, have also stopped working in the United States.
Effects probably on other countries as well
Social media researcher and CEO of Someturva Suvi Uski told earlier that if the use of Tiktok in the United States ends, the European Union will start thinking about similar measures.
Uski also estimates that the disappearance of American content creators will make the application very different, where new types of influencers and phenomena will emerge. For example, European influencers may have more space on Tiktok than before.
Already the threat of banning Tiktok has prompted some American Tiktok users to create accounts on an app called Xiaohongshu in recent days.
Muuttovirta has also brought Finnish users with it. Xiaohongshu has become one of the most downloaded apps in Finland in Apple’s app store.
Sources: AFP, Reuters
Ylen Aam’s Jälkidig predicted the Tiktok ban and its effects on Wednesday (the discussion starts at 4:00 a.m.):