TikTok ready to totally shut down app in US on SUNDAY as ban looms & fans flock to RedNote
TIKTOK is ready to totally shut down it’s app to Americans on Sunday as the federal ban creeps in.
Defiant US social media users have flocked to the Chinese-owned app RedNote in response to the government’s shock move.
A federal ban on the platform was passed due to national security concerns.
The government revealed it would enforce the ban unless the app was sold by it’s Chinese-owner ByteDance, to a government-approved buyer
TikTokers are are reportedly set to be greeted to a different looking app on Sunday.
Under TikTok’s plan, people attempting to open the app will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban, a report said.
Users will then be able to download all of their data on the site.
The government’s initial plans for the app after Sunday would not have deleted the site off people’s phones or introduced a blackout.
Huge mobile phone companies like Apple and Google would have been banned from helping TikTok keep running.
This would have included banning updates, making the site glitchy and unusable overtime.
Talk of potential buyers had seemed unsuccessful until it was reported Elon Musk was in talks with China this week to buy the platform.
Officials in Beijing were apparently in talks with the Trump’s tech tycoon pal, but TikTok has dismissed the claim as “pure fiction”.
A TikTok spokesperson said: “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
The January 19 deadline imposed by the US government is just days away with no real hopes of a sale at the moment.
TikTok has sought, at the very least, for a delay in the ban coming into effect as it claims the move would violate the First Amendment, which protects free speech.
The only way this incoming ban can be overturned is through a US Supreme Court decision.
NOT APPY NOW
A huge 170 million Americans – roughly half of the country’s population – use the short-form video app, and TikTok believes a third of it’s users would abandon it a month into the looming ban.
Many of these US social media users have scrambled to find a TikTok alternative and flocked to a different Chinese-owned platform called RedNote.
An explosive decision
Analysis by Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun
The “Will they, won’t they” saga of TikTok’s possible ban has been looming for sometime and could come to an almighty conclusion very soon.
It’s all over fears about alleged links TikTok owner ByteDance has to the Chinese government – which the firm has long-denied.
The US Justice Department says because TikTok’s parent company is from China, it has access to user data and therefore poses “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale”.
But it looks like TikTok could planning to play hardball, opting to withdraw from the US entirely rather than go through any forced sale or other arrangement.
This would be an explosive decision for a platform that boasts some 1.6billion active users each month globally – an estimated 170million from the US alone.
This app rose to the top of Apple’s App Store this week becoming the most downloaded item in the country.
It’s content is mostly in Chinese because of the app’s parent company, but the site is changing and becoming more friendly to English speakers.
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