The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1]
The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines.
> If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines.
I don't know about any classified briefing, but TikTok publicly shot itself in the foot badly during the vote, though a hamfisted attempt to influence it. I think that was enough in itself to bring about bipartisan unity.
This is what happens when the process of law gets thrown out of the window and instead power is negotiated by people at the top. As someone who lived in a dictatorship -> democracy -> dictatorship, seeing tech CEOs pilgrimage to the Trump house, the US is critically close to turning into a dictatorship.
This is exactly what we saw when Sept 11 happened (over 20 years ago) and the Republicans decided to invade Iraq and carry out all sorts of extra-judicial mischief.
I started to think the world was going to end but its ticking along in the same manner which has now coloured my views.
They’re massaging his ego and quite honestly it might be their best strategy. A whole lot of people out there want their TikTok back and you can bet Trump would love to call the press conference announcing that he, and only he, did the greatest deal and got the app back. Classified briefing be damned.
“Freedom
loving Trump saving freedom of speech from the dictators that ban apps” would be such a boon for Trump. It’s amazing that the current administration set up such a scene.
People who want something they don't use or directly effected from be banned are not the same as the people who use the thing and getting directly affected.
People who loose stuff will feel much much strongly that those who on political or intellectual level support the ban. The later will move on, the former will remember.
> According to Rasmussen’s Napolitan News Service survey released Friday
Rasmussen consistently gets ranked as one of the least reliable major pollsters, and has a heavy conservative bias. I would take that with a whole salt crystal.
He can even appear like fighting the anti-freedom establishment that tries to take away something they like and make people believe that any other legal troubles he might have later be of political nature.
The TikTok legislation was included as part of a larger $95 billion package that provides foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and was passed 79-18.
iykyk. Also this article from two days ago is hilarious, "congressional leaders who championed the law are now shying away from calling for the ban to begin Sunday" with Schumer, Jeffries and the White House all trying to pass the buck to someone else and try to avoid a ban:
Reality is this was a game of chicken. American leaders wanted to force a sale not be left standing like a trophy hunter next to the corpse of one of the most beloved apps. Now the elephant is dead and there's no hunters to be found! We'll see what happens.
And Trump so far is only offering a 90 day extension to find a new US buyer. The ban was signed into law late April last year, but they've spent much of that time trying to fight it legally than actually find a buyer.
The American people by and large do not know how government operates, who has power and authority over what, etc. Blame and reward usually is attributed to the President who has high visibility.
> The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had.
Such grave security concerns and yet that both Trump and Harris had official accounts on tiktok? Doesn't make much sense does it? Trump was extremely popular on tiktok.
> If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines.
Whenever I hear bipartisan support, I know it's not for anything good. Like for iraq war, israel, etc. Do you think the "classified briefing" is anything but theater? Do you really think they weren't told what to do before the classified briefing by their masters?
The whole tiktok nonsense is absurd just like the ukraine war. But at least we got to see a ukrainian comedian on the lex fridman podcast.
After Poland managed to collapse communist regime in partially
free elections in 1989 where all elected sits went to democratic opposition the whole Soviet Union collapsed. Ukraine declared independence in 1991, all regions of Ukraine decided to stay with Ukraine in national referendum.
In 1991 Polish and Ukraine GDP were about equal, both countries have around 40 million citizens.
Poland immediately turned towards West. We rapidly liberated our economy - Balcerowicz reforms. We aimed at joining NATO and EU as guarantees of our independence from Soviets/Russia. After invading Poland in 1939 with Germans, last Russian soldiers left Poland in 1993. We joined NATO in 1999 and EU in 2004.
Ukraine on the other hand was divided between West and East.
In 2021 Polish economy was 3 times bigger than Ukrainian. More than million Ukrainians were economic migrants in Poland.
We made the right choice with turning immediately towards West with full force. Ukraine stumbled.
But they saw that Poland is doing so much better than they were doing. That's why they wanted to join EU. That's what started Euromajdan.
Now Russia is threatening all of us with nuclear holocaust. Every other month you can hear from the highest Russian leadership nuclear threats.
We have lost 20% of population in WWII started by Germany and Soviet Russia. Every fifth person killed.
We are taking Russian holocaust threats 100% seriously.
There was nothing in the classified briefing. The ban was enacted because their zionist donors told them to. Our government is corrupted past the point of recovery.
If you read Senator's quotes from the the time, for example here https://www.npr.org/2024/03/21/1239691465/tiktok-ban-bill-se..., all the senators are saying the briefing should be public, aka it's b.s. there's nothing in it. They talked about chinese collecting data and potentially manipulating the algorithm, just the standard public discussion about this. Halfway through that article Tom Cotton slips and complains about a "clear skew in pro-Hamas propaganda" which is a flat out illegal 1st amendment violation, censorship based on viewpoint.
Huh, I didn't realize Marvel Snap fell under that umbrella ban. I play that game during lunch breaks, it's a good card game with 2-3 minute matches, developed by Hearthstone luminaries (though it's never been clear to me what gameplay benefit you got from season passes, ie what their business model is. I was unaware of security concerns like TikTok that Tracks Everything it can)
Upon launching the game on iOS, the following message appears:
> Unfortunately, MARVEL SNAP is temporarily unavailable on US stores and is unavailable to play in the US.
> This outage is a surprise to us and wasn't planned.
> MARVEL SNAP isn't going anywhere. We're actively working on getting the game up as soon as possible and will update you once we have more to share.
The bill specifically says "ByteDance/TikTok bad", and says for other companies the President needs to make a written determination. So in theory it can affect any other company based in China, provided the President makes that determination.
There's a lot of debate in the media about whether or not the banning of bytedance/tiktok is an infringement of the 1st ammendment rights of users or if it represents a threat to the security of the country.
I just think that governments shouldn't be able to easily take down internet services like this. If it was just a normal web service with reasonably competent userbase, it could continue operating a hidden service over tor or some other mixnet. Instead, the government can effectively shut down the service by sending takedown orders to app stores and ISPs, which are naturally monopolistic and have little reason to stand up to regulators and act on behalf of their user's interests.
People have locked themselves into walled gardens and this is the end product. The town square has been privatized and controlled. Own your computers, people! Or someone else will.
The US constitution prohibits bills of attainder, i.e. targeted toward specific individuals. The US has also decided that corporations are people, so the concept should apply to them as well. Therefore, by their own reasoning this is unconstitutional.
I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I hate hypocrisy (which this is) and rarely hesitate to call it out. On the other hand I believe "corporate personhood" is absolute bollocks. I resolve this in my own mind by saying that the ban on bills of attainder can be extended to corporations and other entities without declaring them persons. Laws should be statements of principle, timeless and equally applicable to all, not one-off actions targeted toward specific entities.
No opinion on TikTok itself as I've never used it, but I hope this wakes more people up to the fact that they're at the whim of the app gatekeepers and makes them demand the ability to run what they want on hardware they supposedly own.
Yes, if you live in the United States, our elected government has the ability to supersede your right to general-purpose computing which is—as far as I’m aware—not in either the Constitution, the bill of rights, nor in later amendments.
Don't care; fuck all nationalism. We are all complete people — don't frame your own existence as that of a human resource that belongs to some higher power.
You can say "fuck all nationalism" all you want but you are in the vast, vast minority, and until you have the guns and the army to do things your way, dealwiddit.
Correct, I am well aware of what Apple are and don't use iOS. I'm talking about normies — I hope this makes some of them realize computing freedom is something to care about :)
Covid already proved that the government can yank your shit at their whim with absolutely no recourse on your part. It’s just nobody was paying any attention because they all lost their mind. Hopefully people wake up and see how little the government gives a shit about you or I.
Tens of thousands of companies using Tiktok shop or other Bytedance services is suddenly in-operable as well. Jobs loses, layoffs coming.
The power of digital dictatorship, USA government can kill a company, the entire ecosystem, all of the companies, users, entities relying on the digital application and service with stroke of pen. Every country and person on the planet should have vested interest to reduce choke points that can be exploited by USA government. So USA government shenanigans can't just ruin the invention you created, your jobs, your peaceful Sunday.
As a counter argument (and not saying this is right)
This creates a vacuum of time that Americans now can use on other tech apps. American leisure hours is a finite resource, in a way TikTok competes with Netflix, Meta, and even sports.
Ah, the great and classic play of "politician wants to insert his name into everything to get recognition when things get better". This is Modi's rice all over again.
Is this the first time we're getting a social media with no US-users? This is actually kinda interesting, as US-based content dominates a good chunk of international videos.
Though I when last changed countries I did find that I lost some purchases. I would guess it can happen when an item is not available in the new country.
There’s a rate limit on how often you change countries and you’ll need a payment method from the country you want to change to (e.g. a credit card issued in that country, the address on the card doesn’t matter).
You’ll also need to cancel e.g. your Apple TV+ subscription before you can switch.
No, not for the App Store account — which can be a different one. Once you've downloaded an app with a different account, the credentials will be stored and you can switch back to the native one; you'll also get regular updates. I do this all the time for US-only apps on an EU phone (e.g. Google Voice).
I'm pretty sure I changed regions once on my old iPhone over a decade ago and it was fairly seamless.
Maybe someone who's done it more recently can comment?
It would be brutal if what you say is true. Simply moving is not something a user would expect to reset their whole account.
And if purchases were lost I would think it would be pretty strong grounds to bring a lawsuit against the company (especially if the apps were bought prior to any attempts by Apple to write in clauses permitting what'd amount to theft).
Even if you already have TikTok on you phone, you can’t use it now and get the following message:
> Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now
> A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now.
> We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!
If only our climate emergency had such a hero to swoop in and save the planet. Pretty sure I saw a headline on HN last week that we already blew through the 1.5C limit, I doubt it got a fraction of the 2000+ hits this story got yesterday.
That’s dishonest of ByteDance. The legislated ban doesn’t mean the existing US users can’t use it right now. This message simply means that ByteDance made a business decision to shut it down for the existing US user base.
I understand several reasons they might be making that business decision, including supportability reasons. I also get why they might be choosing to explain the situation dishonestly. But understanding their potential motivations doesn’t make a dishonest explanation any less dishonest.
Douyin is comepletely separated from TikTok. The apps cannot legally be the same. They do not want their citizens and foreigners talking on the same platform.
tiktok.com was their full-featured webapp. I guess trying to skirt the law weakens their case even more so they decided to fully comply in both letter and spirit. Even VPNs don't work.
China doesn't allow open social media for its citizens for the sole reason that it's bad for the stability of the CCP's dictatorship regime, not because it's bad for the people or the country.
So America is the same as China and Americans should not fight for the freedoms they enjoy. By the way American social media platform are not banned in China rather Chinese people access to information outside China is restricted if an american company following all the laws of China would open an app it would not be stopped any more than a Chinese app both would have to follow the same laws. In the US it's a different law for US apps vs Chinese apps which I think just tells you the US government is owned by corporations.
Hey I'm curious about this point of view—would you mind elaborating on what specifically justifies it in your mind? Is it because it's akin to a trade war and we're responding to their 'import restriction' with our own? Something else...? Thanks!
China didn't invent the transistor or the internet either, because they do stupid shit like clamping down arbitrarily instead of just telling the losers to try harder.
Artificially suppressing competition is the most anti-capitalist and anti-American thing I've ever seen, no matter how shitty this particular app may be.
don't like seeing apps delivered exclusively via stores that can implement these daft bans, ecosystem taxes etc.
also ignore people yapping about China being such a huge adversary when the 2 countries do close to a trillion USD yearly in trade, it's all lip service to get their competition killed unfairly so they don't have to innovate or an attempt to scare the govt/some LPs into funding their most often useless faux-nationalist bullshit without oversight.
> If you already have these apps installed on your device, they will remain on your device. But they can’t be redownloaded if deleted or restored if you move to a new device. In-app purchases and new subscriptions are no longer possible.
TikTok goes dark in the US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753396 - Jan 2025 (312 comments)
The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines.
[1] https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxbusiness.com/foxbusiness.c...
I don't know about any classified briefing, but TikTok publicly shot itself in the foot badly during the vote, though a hamfisted attempt to influence it. I think that was enough in itself to bring about bipartisan unity.
I started to think the world was going to end but its ticking along in the same manner which has now coloured my views.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/lawmaker...
But I will say, partly emboldened by Massie's admissions, the absolute control Israel has over the US government is concerning.
Especially since a lot of young voters / voters in general don’t see much of the impact of the president.
Him doing something popular that the average person can see seems like a huge win.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/17/americans-banning-tik...
People who loose stuff will feel much much strongly that those who on political or intellectual level support the ban. The later will move on, the former will remember.
Rasmussen consistently gets ranked as one of the least reliable major pollsters, and has a heavy conservative bias. I would take that with a whole salt crystal.
iykyk. Also this article from two days ago is hilarious, "congressional leaders who championed the law are now shying away from calling for the ban to begin Sunday" with Schumer, Jeffries and the White House all trying to pass the buck to someone else and try to avoid a ban:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/us-leaders-lawmake...
Reality is this was a game of chicken. American leaders wanted to force a sale not be left standing like a trophy hunter next to the corpse of one of the most beloved apps. Now the elephant is dead and there's no hunters to be found! We'll see what happens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok_in_the_...
could you explain this in more detail? really curious about it.
Do you understand that the President doesn't pass laws, Congress does?
Such grave security concerns and yet that both Trump and Harris had official accounts on tiktok? Doesn't make much sense does it? Trump was extremely popular on tiktok.
> If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines.
Whenever I hear bipartisan support, I know it's not for anything good. Like for iraq war, israel, etc. Do you think the "classified briefing" is anything but theater? Do you really think they weren't told what to do before the classified briefing by their masters?
The whole tiktok nonsense is absurd just like the ukraine war. But at least we got to see a ukrainian comedian on the lex fridman podcast.
After Poland managed to collapse communist regime in partially free elections in 1989 where all elected sits went to democratic opposition the whole Soviet Union collapsed. Ukraine declared independence in 1991, all regions of Ukraine decided to stay with Ukraine in national referendum.
In 1991 Polish and Ukraine GDP were about equal, both countries have around 40 million citizens.
Poland immediately turned towards West. We rapidly liberated our economy - Balcerowicz reforms. We aimed at joining NATO and EU as guarantees of our independence from Soviets/Russia. After invading Poland in 1939 with Germans, last Russian soldiers left Poland in 1993. We joined NATO in 1999 and EU in 2004.
Ukraine on the other hand was divided between West and East.
In 2021 Polish economy was 3 times bigger than Ukrainian. More than million Ukrainians were economic migrants in Poland.
We made the right choice with turning immediately towards West with full force. Ukraine stumbled.
But they saw that Poland is doing so much better than they were doing. That's why they wanted to join EU. That's what started Euromajdan.
Now Russia is threatening all of us with nuclear holocaust. Every other month you can hear from the highest Russian leadership nuclear threats.
We have lost 20% of population in WWII started by Germany and Soviet Russia. Every fifth person killed.
We are taking Russian holocaust threats 100% seriously.
Upon launching the game on iOS, the following message appears:
> Unfortunately, MARVEL SNAP is temporarily unavailable on US stores and is unavailable to play in the US.
> This outage is a surprise to us and wasn't planned.
> MARVEL SNAP isn't going anywhere. We're actively working on getting the game up as soon as possible and will update you once we have more to share.
I guess we'll see how temporary it is.
Presumably they are switching to a new publisher and will be back soon.
I just think that governments shouldn't be able to easily take down internet services like this. If it was just a normal web service with reasonably competent userbase, it could continue operating a hidden service over tor or some other mixnet. Instead, the government can effectively shut down the service by sending takedown orders to app stores and ISPs, which are naturally monopolistic and have little reason to stand up to regulators and act on behalf of their user's interests.
People have locked themselves into walled gardens and this is the end product. The town square has been privatized and controlled. Own your computers, people! Or someone else will.
I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I hate hypocrisy (which this is) and rarely hesitate to call it out. On the other hand I believe "corporate personhood" is absolute bollocks. I resolve this in my own mind by saying that the ban on bills of attainder can be extended to corporations and other entities without declaring them persons. Laws should be statements of principle, timeless and equally applicable to all, not one-off actions targeted toward specific entities.
Oracle shut TikTok's servers down, because they didn't want to risk being fined a trillion dollars.
Apple and Google are at the whim of Congress here
You knew what you were buying
The power of digital dictatorship, USA government can kill a company, the entire ecosystem, all of the companies, users, entities relying on the digital application and service with stroke of pen. Every country and person on the planet should have vested interest to reduce choke points that can be exploited by USA government. So USA government shenanigans can't just ruin the invention you created, your jobs, your peaceful Sunday.
Every company is subject to the laws of every country where it operates. I don't know why you're singling the US out.
Ultimatley Bytedance is responsible for their own behavior and the consequences.
This creates a vacuum of time that Americans now can use on other tech apps. American leisure hours is a finite resource, in a way TikTok competes with Netflix, Meta, and even sports.
That’s revenue in other areas.
Twitter was fun for the few hours when it got hacked and they shutdown all of the "verified" accounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Twitter_account_hijacking
Wonder how Meta's stock will do on Monday
My guess is the price won't budge on Monday.
Though I when last changed countries I did find that I lost some purchases. I would guess it can happen when an item is not available in the new country.
There’s a rate limit on how often you change countries and you’ll need a payment method from the country you want to change to (e.g. a credit card issued in that country, the address on the card doesn’t matter).
You’ll also need to cancel e.g. your Apple TV+ subscription before you can switch.
Maybe someone who's done it more recently can comment?
It would be brutal if what you say is true. Simply moving is not something a user would expect to reset their whole account.
And if purchases were lost I would think it would be pretty strong grounds to bring a lawsuit against the company (especially if the apps were bought prior to any attempts by Apple to write in clauses permitting what'd amount to theft).
Amazing news! It's a plot to stop people buying new phones, hence saving the planet a little bit...
> Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now
> A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now.
> We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!
I understand several reasons they might be making that business decision, including supportability reasons. I also get why they might be choosing to explain the situation dishonestly. But understanding their potential motivations doesn’t make a dishonest explanation any less dishonest.
I assume douyin is available in China?
Is the web capable of all native app functions yet? What’s missing?
China doesn't allow open social media for its citizens for the sole reason that it's bad for the stability of the CCP's dictatorship regime, not because it's bad for the people or the country.
I view it as the CCP stating American media cannot be trusted. In that case, why should the US trust Chinese media?
Artificially suppressing competition is the most anti-capitalist and anti-American thing I've ever seen, no matter how shitty this particular app may be.
All ByteDance has to do is sell for a generous valuation
don't like seeing apps delivered exclusively via stores that can implement these daft bans, ecosystem taxes etc.
also ignore people yapping about China being such a huge adversary when the 2 countries do close to a trillion USD yearly in trade, it's all lip service to get their competition killed unfairly so they don't have to innovate or an attempt to scare the govt/some LPs into funding their most often useless faux-nationalist bullshit without oversight.
> If you already have these apps installed on your device, they will remain on your device. But they can’t be redownloaded if deleted or restored if you move to a new device. In-app purchases and new subscriptions are no longer possible.
But regardless, good riddance.