Summary
TikTok became unavailable in the U.S. on January 20, 2025, after a federal ban targeting Chinese-owned ByteDance took effect.
Apple and Google removed TikTok and other ByteDance apps like CapCut and Lemon8 from their stores, and users saw a message stating the app was no longer accessible.
The law, signed by President Biden and upheld by the Supreme Court, requires ByteDance to sell TikTok or face shutdown.
Trump may grant a 90-day extension, but no buyers have emerged.
The ban sparked debates on censorship, free speech, and national security.
It’s disappointing to see all this fragmentation among proprietary platforms, even today.
For some reason, we can manage open standards like email and SMS and they continue to be around. However, efforts like Diaspora, ActivityPub, etc…are still not mainstream. And we have people aligning themselves with platforms based on demographics and politics, choosing which platform(s) to be on like the selection of Faux vs. CNN vs. MSNBC.
I still say that if email and HTTP did not predate the commercialization of the Internet being allowed, we probably would have ended up with fragmentation there, too. Hell, Microsoft certainly tried to foul up browser standards. It’s too bad there was not a robust open standard for instant messaging that pre-dated the commercialization. That’s just as fragmented as “social media” is…
Where it’s covered in all political plights
Where the swindlers swindle the night
Impossible comes true, manipulating you
Oh, this is the greatest show