As a ban looms over the social media app and its 170 million users, TikTok said it will be “forced to go dark” on Sunday unless the Biden administration explicitly declares that it will not enforce the ban.
In a statement Friday night, TikTok said the Biden administration has “failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans” following the Supreme Court’s decision earlier that day to uphold the “divest or ban” law.
“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” TikTok said.
The statement, issued just over a day before the ban is scheduled to go into effect, puts pressure on President Joe Biden in his final days in office to publicly decline to enforce a law that passed Congress swiftly with bipartisan support.
Under the law, app stores must remove TikTok from their offerings or potentially face up to a $5,000 fine for each user who continues to access the app. Although the Biden administration has said it will be up to its successor to implement the law, companies like Apple and Google are likely to consider it a massive risk to keep TikTok in their app stores given the five-year enforcement window.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Saturday called TikTok’s latest statement a “stunt” and clarified that its position is that the Trump administration is responsible for enforcing the ban.
“It is a stunt, and 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,” she 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.”
Passed in April, the law requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the popular app to a non-Chinese entity or be banned from app stores in the U.S. ByteDance has long said it will not sell. The legislation sped through Congress with bipartisan enthusiasm, but now that the ban is imminent and President-elect Donald Trump has flip-flopped on his support for the app, some lawmakers are trying to delay it from going into effect. The Biden administration has also sought to punt the dilemma to its successor. Biden officials have been exploring ways to keep TikTok available after the Jan. 19 deadline, NBC News reported, so as to defer the problem to Trump. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is attending a number of inaugural events in Washington, D.C., this weekend in support of the president-elect. After the Supreme Court’s decision Friday, Chew personally thanked Trump for his “commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.” Trump, meanwhile, told NBC News on Saturday that he will “most likely” grant TikTok a 90-day extension on Monday, his first day back in office.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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