By Sheila Dang and Jaspreet Singh
(Reuters) – TikTok stopped working for 170 million Americans late on Saturday after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled against TikTok’s attempt to avoid a ban that could shut down the app.
The ban is the end result of a 2024 law passed over national security concerns that required TikTok parent ByteDance to sell the popular short video app or shut it down in the United States on January 19.
It remained unclear how long the ban would remain in place as President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Monday, said he would try to find a “political solution” to the problem to keep the app running in the United States.
On Sunday at the Truth Social, Trump said, “SAVE TIKTOK!”
Here’s what’s happening now.
WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE APPLICATION?
New users will not be able to download TikTok from the Apple (NASDAQ: ) and Google (NASDAQ: ) app stores, and existing users will not be able to update the app because the law prohibits any entity from enabling the download or maintenance of TikTok applications.
It was not immediately clear whether TikTok’s business partners, including Oracle (NYSE: ), which provides TikTok’s cloud infrastructure services and stores its US user data, have suspended services.
TikTok plans to continue paying its 7,000 employees in the US, company executives said in an internal memo.
HOW WILL IT AFFECT USERS?
TikTok’s 170 million US users can’t use the app even if they haven’t deleted it from their phones.
As of Sunday, US users hoping to access TikTok through virtual private networks, or VPNs, which can hide a user’s Internet Protocol, or IP, address and thus their location, have been unsuccessful.
Other Chinese social networking apps like RedNote, known in China as Xiaohongshu, are expected to continue to gain popularity among American users.
Content creators who have built businesses on their TikTok followers have urged their followers to find them on alternatives like Instagram and YouTube.
WHAT WILL ADVERTISERS DO?
Advertisers rushed to prepare contingency plans ahead of the ban, fearing that the shutdown would jeopardize their campaigns on the platforms. One marketing executive described it as a “hair on fire” moment for the advertising world, after months of conventional wisdom that a solution would materialize to keep the short-form video app afloat.
TikTok continued to introduce new features to advertisers, such as launching a tool in beta that would make it easier to create, edit and add ads in bulk.
According to a forecast by the marketing group WARC Media, the ban puts more than $11 billion in annual US advertising investment.
“Wall Street will be watching the performance of Meta (NASDAQ: ), Snap and others to see who benefits from this rapid shift in spending,” said Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency Code3.
WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH US-CHINA TRADE RELATIONS?
A ban on TikTok could exacerbate trade tensions between the US and China that were already tense following restrictions on exports of advanced US semiconductor technology to Beijing.
However, “such a ban would not be a surprise as it has been under discussion for five years,” said Sean Ennis (NYSE: ), a professor at the University of East Anglia.
Trump may try to use executive action to protect TikTok during his four years in office, but he could use the risk of changing his position to get something significant out of China, analysts at LightShed Partners said.
Overturning the ban could give Trump some bargaining power with China, analysts say.
WHO ARE POTENTIAL BUYERS?
TikTok has repeatedly said it cannot sell through ByteDance.
That didn’t stop billionaire businessman Frank McCourt, former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. His consortium values the non-algorithm app at about $20 billion.
Other media outlets have reported that Chinese officials are in talks to potentially sell TikTok’s US operations to billionaire Elon Musk, a major Trump financial backer.
TikTok called the reports “fiction.”
Hours before the ban took effect on Saturday, US search engine startup Perplexity AI submitted a bid to merge with TikTok’s US operations, according to a source familiar with the matter.
