TikTok Will Reportedly Shut Down Its App Completely on Sunday

Piggies, you better get your last tastes of slop in before it is too late. TikTok reportedly plans to shut down its app for U.S. users on Sunday, so long as Biden administration law forcing the company to sell itself is not stopped by the Supreme Court or Congress.

The Information is reporting that TikTok has made the decision to cut off the lights on January 19th rather than limp along as some expected.

Technically speaking, TikTok could continue to function for users who already have the app installed. Using TikTok will not be illegal, but service providers in the United States will not be allowed to work with the social media company. That means Apple and Google will have to remove TikTok from their respective app stores, and cloud hosting providers like Oracle—which tried helping TikTok isolate its U.S. data from China-based employees—will have to stop operating its servers.

TikTok is not being banned in other parts of the world, and the company told U.S. employees in a recent memo that following the ban they will still have jobs. TikTok is, after all, hugely popular around the world, not just in America, and will continue running as normal outside the country. It could theoretically keep running the app for U.S. users from foreign infrastructure. But again, it would be difficult for TikTok to continue on in the United States when it will not be accessible for download or updates.

Still, there were some people who believed the app would continue working until it became too outdated to function. But according to The Information, TikTok has chosen to go out as a martyr, letting users immediately see the consequences of the ban. A pop-up in the app will reportedly give users more info about why the app they know and love is no longer functioning and why they cannot communicate with their Chinese spy any longer.

Gizmodo reached out to TikTok for comment but has not received a response.

An outright ban on TikTok might be a net positive if you believe the research that suggests social media is harmful to adolescents. But one of the other social media giants is likely to take its place—YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat all have their own competing versions of short-term video products. And in recent days some TikTok users have taken to a similar Chinese short-form video app called RedNote, which has already been the source of some incredible content—which is all to say, a ban on TikTok likely will not stop Zoomers from frying their brains with mindless scrolling.

One of the perhaps funniest outcomes of the TikTok ban is terminally online Zoomers posting about longing for their “Chinese spy,” a reference to the allegation that China uses TikTok to surveil Americans.

holy cow, just now realizing this app was responsible for the 2024 video of the year pic.twitter.com/NPdBCc3sSO

— rat king 🐀 (@MikeIsaac) January 14, 2025

Technically speaking, TikTok is not being banned but rather the U.S. government wants it to change ownership, fearing that its Chinese parent company ByteDance could be forced to comply with demands there to influence the content that Americans see, or hand over private data. If TikTok ends up selling to a new owner, like Elon Musk, it could continue to operate. Back in 2020, the U.S. government similarly forced the Chinese owner of gay dating app Grindr to sell the app to U.S. investors on national security grounds.

TikTok has long denied that the Chinese government has any control over its operations, but has not been able to quell the concerns of U.S. officials. Recent reporting suggests that the Chinese government is considering a sale of TikTok to Elon Musk, which undermines the idea that the Chinese government has no influence over it. President-elect Donald Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court to put the ban on hold until he is able to enter office and negotiate a deal, perhaps to sell the app to his consigliere Musk in a sweetheart deal. For its part, TikTok has firmly said that it will not sell.

Ironically, the Biden administration has reportedly permitted some staff of the State Department to continue using TikTok for the purpose of international diplomacy. A ban for thee, not for me.