TikTok Will Shut Down in the US By January 19 Unless Supreme Court Lifts Ban

TikTok announced that it will shut down in the United States by January 19 unless the ban is either lifted or delayed by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments from TikTok, its user base and the Department of Justice about the ban's possible violations of the First Amendment on January 10. Billboard reports that the Supreme Court justices also received a plea from President-elect Donald Trump asking them to give the upcoming administration some time to reach a “political resolution” to the issue, although it remains uncertain if the Supreme Court will take the plea into consideration.

The law was signed by President Joe Biden in April 2024 following approval from wide bipartisan majorities in Congress, with the current government maintaining that “no one can seriously dispute that (China’s) control of TikTok through ByteDance represents a grave threat to national security.” While they claim that ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, can be obliged by Chinese authorities to provide them with the information of the platform's users, TikTok states that the administration “concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so.”

TikTok and ByteDance's attorneys are open to the Trump administration alleviating the law's "most severe consequences," but also noted that shutting down for even just one month will cause the platform to lose almost a third of its daily users in the US as well as advertising revenue.

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