Social media users in the U.S. fumed over TikTok’s shoutout to President-elect Donald Trump after the platform, which went dark late Saturday, weighed in on a federal ban that it described as “unfortunately” barring people using the app.
Millions of TikTok users who expected to scroll through videos on the app were instead met with a pop-up message informing them that the platform was “fortunate” for Trump’s interest in finding “a solution to reinstate” its U.S. operations after he’s sworn into office on Monday.
Trump, in a phone interview with “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on Saturday, said he will “most likely” provide a “90-day extension” to the platform’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to avoid a TikTok ban by selling its U.S. assets.
TikTok had previously warned that it’d go dark Sunday unless the Biden administration gave more “clarity and assurance” to third-party service providers like Apple and Google that it wouldn’t enforce the law when a ban took effect.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred to TikTok’s threat as a “stunt” and emphasized that “actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration.”
President Joe Biden signed the law to force the sale of TikTok last April and the Supreme Court upheld it on Friday.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who is reportedly set to attend Trump’s swearing-in on Monday, shared a video after the Supreme Court decision where he said that the company was “grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform.”
Trump, who has pledged “save” the app, notably wanted to ban the platform back in 2020 before flip-flopping on the app ahead of last year’s election.
Social media users on X mocked TikTok for highlighting Trump in its pop-up message on the shutdown.
“tiktok having a banner pop up for all US users pretty much saying ‘tiktok is banned now sorry but trump will fix it stay tuned 🥹🥹’ is soooo weird and terrifying like this really is just a whole scheme to get trumped to be liked by kids,” wrote one user.
“lmao TikTok has literally built sucking up to Trump into the app. i think they just pulled ahead in the ‘tech leaders prostrate themselves in front of the new administration’ race,” read another post.
You can check out those takes and more in the posts below.
We Won’t Back Down
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