Users have reported access failures since the early hours of this Sunday (19 January) due to the requirement to sell the operation in the country
North American TikTok users faced interruptions in accessing the platform in the early hours of this Sunday (Jan. 19, 2025). The unavailability occurred after it forced ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell its operation in the United States.
The site saw a spike in reports of outages just after midnight, marking the start of the outage. Some messages were shared by users, reporting the problems.
The legislation, sanctioned in April 2024 by President Joe Biden (Democrat), set the deadline until January 19, 2025. Failure to comply with this requirement has led to app bans, including removal from app stores and blocking of updates.
Additionally, hosting services in the US have been banned from working with TikTok. Companies that violate the legislation will face fines of up to US$5,000 per user, affecting the platform’s 170 million users in the United States.
The US Supreme Court, on the Friday before the interruption, validated the law, unanimously deciding that it does not violate the 1st Amendment of the Constitution, which protects freedom of expression. TikTok had gone to court, claiming that the ban infringed on constitutional rights.
The US government defends the ban on TikTok based on its collection of Americans’ sensitive data, citing a risk to national security. The concern is that China could use the information for espionage, an accusation that ByteDance denies. he even considered going to the inauguration of US president-elect, Donald Trump, this Monday (Jan. 20, 2025).
Trump indicated the possibility of delaying the ban on the application. “The 90-day extension is something that will probably be done because it is appropriate.”declared Trump in an interview with NBC, suggesting an imminent announcement about the decision.
