What happened
TikTok is set to be banned in the U.S. starting Sunday under a law that passed with broad bipartisan support last year. The law gave TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, until Jan. 19 to sell the popular app to a U.S. company on national security grounds.
Who said what
"Barring a Supreme Court intervention or some 11th-hour move by the Biden administration," TikTok "plans to go dark in the U.S." at midnight Saturday, The Wall Street Journal said. President Joe Biden does not plan to enforce the ban on his last full day in office, a White House official said Thursday. "Given the timing of when it goes into effect over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement" the law.
Donald Trump plans to keep "TikTok from going dark," incoming national security adviser Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) told Fox News Thursday. The president-elect is "considering an executive order to allow TikTok to continue operating," The New York Times said, though it's "unclear" if such an order "would survive legal challenges or persuade the app stores and cloud computing companies to take steps that could expose them to huge penalties" under the 2024 law.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
What next?
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to have a "prime seating location on the dais" at Trump's inauguration on Monday, next to other Big Tech executives, PBS said.
-
Pipe bombs: The end of a conspiracy theory?Feature Despite Bongino and Bondi’s attempt at truth-telling, the MAGAverse is still convinced the Deep State is responsible
-
The robot revolutionFeature Advances in tech and AI are producing android machine workers. What will that mean for humans?
-
Health: Will Kennedy dismantle U.S. immunization policy?Feature ‘America’s vaccine playbook is being rewritten by people who don’t believe in them’
-
Australia’s teen social media ban takes effectSpeed Read Kids under age 16 are now barred from platforms including YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Reddit
-
Separating the real from the fake: tips for spotting AI slopThe Week Recommends Advanced AI may have made slop videos harder to spot, but experts say it’s still possible to detect them
-
Blackouts: Why the internet keeps breakingfeature Cloudflare was the latest in a string of outages
-
X update unveils foreign MAGA boostersSpeed Read The accounts were located in Russia and Nigeria, among other countries
-
Is AI to blame for recent job cuts?Today’s Big Question Numerous companies have called out AI for being the reason for the culling
-
Saudi Arabia could become an AI focal pointUnder the Radar A state-backed AI project hopes to rival China and the United States
-
Sora 2 and the fear of an AI video futureIn the Spotlight Cutting-edge video-creation app shares ‘hyperrealistic’ AI content for free
-
Trump allies reportedly poised to buy TikTokSpeed Read Under the deal, U.S. companies would own about 80% of the company
