TikTok stopped working in the US late on Saturday, shortly before a federal ban on the Chinese-owned short-video app was due to take effect.
The app was no longer available on Apple’s iOS App Store or Google’s Play Store. The US Congress passed a law in April mandating that parent company ByteDance either sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner or face a total shutdown. It chose the latter.
TikTok said that divestment “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally”. The company held that line until the very end.
The app’s disappearance has been five years in the making. Donald Trump first proposed a ban on TikTok in mid-2020 via executive order, which did not succeed. Various members of Congress proposed measures that would do the same, only one passed. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act became law, mandating TikTok be sold or be banned.
“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 message to users attempting to use the app said.
TikTok’s attorney told the supreme court that the app would “go dark” on 19 January. After TikTok disappears from app stores, preventing new downloads and updates, it will gradually obsolesce while the ban remains in place. Without regular maintenance, the app’s smooth functionality will suffer glitches and may become vulnerable to cyber-attacks. TikTok itself may shut off access even to users who have already downloaded the app to apply political pressure, per multiple reports.
And the masks came off
Edit; let's amend (profoundly as wished) if that helps someone missing the context
The spectacle of TikTok pledging allegiance to Trump in the face of its ban is a stark revelation of the deeper alignment between authoritarian state-capitalism and reactionary forces within global capitalism. TikTok, a tool of China’s soft power, has long operated as an instrument of the CCP’s technocratic and market-driven strategy. Trump, a figurehead of American neo-fascism, represents the extreme contradictions of bourgeois politics in crisis, wielding populist rhetoric to consolidate power. Their sudden alignment is not an aberration but a crystallization of mutual interests: TikTok secures its foothold in the US market, while Trump uses the platform’s return to bolster his populist image and project dominance over a fragmented capitalist class.
This moment unearths a truth Marxist theory has long emphasized: in times of crisis, capital will shed its ideological pretenses and unite across borders to secure its survival. TikTok’s deference to Trump is a mask-off moment for both Chinese state-capitalism and the American far-right. It reveals their shared hostility to the potential of an organized, class-conscious proletariat, particularly among the app’s young, progressive user base. The CCP and Trumpism alike aim to neutralize this energy, diverting it into consumerism or reactionary politics. In this, we see the machinery of global capital—state-guided or otherwise—aligning against the revolutionary potential of the masses, reaffirming the urgency of a unified proletarian struggle against the forces of oppression.
TikTok is CIA. Douyin is CPC.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-tiktok-pipeline-why-tiktok-employing-national-security-agents/280336/
https://www.mintpressnews.com/288710-tiktok-isnt-anti-israel-its-hired-unit-8200-agents-to-run-its-affairs/288710/
A solid theory to explain how platforms align with state interests, exemplifying how state-capitalist powers weaponize media as tools of soft power, subordinating them to geopolitical and ideological agendas.