TikTok could go dark in the United States on Sunday after the Supreme Court upheld a ban on the Chinese-owned social media platform — but it could be back as early as Monday.
President-elect Donald Trump said he will “most likely” delay a ban on TikTok for 90 days after he takes office on Monday but noted he has not made a final decision in a phone interview with NBC News on Saturday.
“I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at. The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” Trump said in the interview.
“If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday,” he added.
The suggestion of an extension is the latest twist in a saga that’s dragged on for months, leaving the fate of the app — with its 170 million US users — in limbo.
The law blocking TikTok was passed last year with strong bipartisan support and signed into law by President Joe Biden. Lawmakers said TikTok’s ties to China and its access to reams of data posed a threat to national security.
Many US users told CNN they were bracing for an end to the app, including influencers and other small businesses that said they depended on the platform for a living. Still, they said, they held out hope the app would somehow be saved.
But the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the ban, dashing hopes of a last-second judicial assist.
Later on Friday, TikTok said it would go offline on Sunday unless there was intervention from the Biden administration. Some of the companies that operate app stores and run computer servers are said to be concerned that they will be held liable. If TikTok goes dark, it will be because those service providers stop carrying the app to avoid legal consequences.
Meanwhile, Trump — who first warned of TikTok’s dangers five years ago — is now casting himself as the app’s savior. Earlier this month, on his Truth Social account, he posted stats about his own popularity on TikTok and asked, “Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?”
TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew has met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in the weeks leading up to the ban taking effect and is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
A 90-day extension?
The law passed last year allows the president to delay the ban from going into effect by 90 days but requires evidence that parties working to arrange a sale of TikTok to a US-owned company have made significant progress.
But TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, has rejected would-be buyers. The company has cited its popularity among American users, and its value to small businesses across the country, as it fights to stay online without any change in ownership.
After the Supreme Court ruled, 9-0, to uphold the ban, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre signaled the administration wouldn’t enforce the law on Biden’s final day in office.
Due to the federal holiday weekend and the inauguration, “actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next administration,” she said.
But TikTok wasn’t satisfied by that statement. According to a person familiar with the matter, some service providers — companies like Google and Apple that would face exorbitant fines for allowing US access to TikTok once the ban takes effect — told TikTok they believed they were vulnerable under the law starting Sunday.
The service providers “do not feel that they’ve been given enough assurance that they will not be liable,” the person told CNN late Friday.
So TikTok issued a public warning that it would be “forced to go dark” Sunday unless the Biden administration was more explicit “to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement.”
This raised the prospect that TikTok would turn off the digital lights on Sunday morning — a move that would put even more pressure on Trump to negotiate a solution in the weeks to come.
A White House source reiterated to CNN that there will not be any fines by the Biden administration associated with keeping TikTok active on Sunday.
At the same time, however, some Biden officials are content with TikTok going dark for a day, since the law was passed with strong support from both parties.
The decision “is going to be made by the next president anyway,” Biden told reporters Friday.
TikTok’s final minute
On Saturday, the White House called TikTok’s warning about going dark a “stunt.”
“We see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump administration takes office on Monday,” Jean-Pierre said. “We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”
A TikTok spokesperson had no immediate reaction to the statement from the White House.
For the time being, the company still expects service providers — like companies that operate servers full of videos — to restrict access to the app at 12:01 a.m. ET on Sunday.
On Apple and Google’s app stores, the most popular free apps for the past week have been TikTok-like apps, including two that are also owned by Chinese companies. One of them, photo-sharing app Lemon8, is owned by ByteDance, just like TikTok. But Lemon8 may have the same fate as TikTok in the future.
Given Trump’s public remarks about TikTok any blackout may not last long.
Trump is said to be considering issuing an executive order that could effectively pause the ban and provide some time to sort out a long-term solution.
But he will face pressure from multiple directions. Some Republican senators, like Josh Hawley of Missouri and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, remain strongly supportive of the ban.
“ByteDance and its Chinese Communist masters had nine months to sell TikTok before the Sunday deadline,” Cotton wrote on X. “The very fact that Communist China refuses to permit its sale reveals exactly what TikTok is: a communist spy app.”
Analyst Richard Greenfield of LightShed Partners, who has long followed the TikTok saga, anticipates that TikTok will ultimately stay online in the United States.
On Saturday, Perplexity AI, a San Francisco-based AI search-engine startup, confirmed to CNN that it submitted a bid to ByteDance to merge with TikTok.
CNN’s Auzinea Bacon contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional content.
