It’s back online, “As the result of President Trump’s efforts…”, from a screen shot my daughter sent me. And it IS available again.
It’s nonsense. There was no reason for them to shut down today. The Biden Administration had already announced they would take no action to enforce the ban.
It was a good move if you’re TikTok though.
They understand they can manipulate him by stroking his ego.
The Straight Dope thread’s discussion was more centered on children accidentally eating Tide Pods, rather than the meme’s iteration popularized in 2017, which portrays pods as a delicious food.[21][23]
Well, it is nice to see us in print.
Well, as long as Trump hadn’t announced what he would do, non-compliance for today would have been a risky move on TikTok’s part - they could have been fined for this non-compliance if the Trump administration decided to enforce the ban. Clearly, a fine for that one day of non-compliance would have been lawful. But now they know the Trump administration won’t go after them for the time being, so that risk is gone.
Again - Tik Tok didn’t have to do anything. They weren’t in any danger of being shut down. The dangers under the law are to:
- App stores who still carry the Tik Tok app, and,
- Any American company providing hosting for the app.
If I were the General Counsel to Apple or Google, I would be advising taking the app out of the app stores. Same as if I were the GC for Oracle or whoever else might be providing servers. The potential fines are very large, and I would not be looking to run the risk of the government deciding they would enforce the law.
But this whole, “oh, the Biden Administration shut us down but President Trump made it right,” thing is just so much manufactured bullshit.
Especially since they went back online quicker than Trump could possibly have actually done anything relevant.
The fines only applied to app stores, ISPs and hosting services. It was well-established that once the ban went to effect, its impact would have been gradual, as a lack of app updates eventually made the app non-functional (and web traffic dwindled to those using VPNs).
14 hours, to be exact.