The TikTok Ban Was a Nothing Burger
January 19, 2025
It turns out TikTok is still banned in the United States. Please read the follow up article.
The "nothing ever happens" crowd may of been screaming, saying that nothing is going to happen. But guess what, something happened, kinda.
Banning
I don't know when (I was clocked in when it started appearing), but last night a message popped up for all American TikTok users:
Important Update from TikTok We regret that a U.S. law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable. We're working to restore our service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned.
You could close out of this message, but it was starting to show that the ban was actually going to happen. The ban has been discussed for quite some time now, so most people didn't actually think it was going to go through. But at 10:30 PM Detroit time the app stopped loading new content, and trying to open it gave you 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!
A little bit of a biased message, but alright.
Editors Note: As I was writing this article, something happened. I don't mean to get ahead of myself, but TikTok was unbanned. But pretend that hasn't happened yet.
If your account had ever been signed into from an American IP address, you could not access the platform. This created some problems with Canadians who lived close to the border, as well as some other people.
On mobile, you could not get around this, but on desktop you could install a userscript to bypass the ban. I didn't have to even do this, the website still worked for me the whole time. Same thing with the TV app nobody uses. Some people got a ban screen on desktop (which was identical to the mobile one, except with the option to logout).
Unbanning
By the afternoon of the next morning, TikTok made an announcement on Twitter:
STATEMENT FROM TIKTOK:
— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) January 19, 2025
In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170…
On top of this, you could now open the app. Not everyone could initially use all features, but you could at least look around. Some people got the following error, with the only option being to close the app:
TikTok is temporarily unavailable We're working hard to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience.
But slowly, more and more people were able to use the app, making this ban a nothing burger. This whole ban thing was obviously a publicity stunt for Donald Trump, who originally was the one who wanted to ban TikTok.
One thing is that I downloaded a bunch of videos, just in case something did happen. I downloaded about 8000 of them onto an external hard drive, and I currently don't know what to do with them. I will probably upload them to the Internet Archive when I get the chance.
Non-American users were celebrating the ban, happy they could finally use things like the metric system (better than imperial) and Celsius (not better than Fahrenheit). They're going to be so upset to learn that the app is already unbanned.
I wonder what the people who moved to Xiaohongshu are thinking. And now that TikTok is back, can Instagram please change the images on profiles back to a square? Thank you.