TikTok restored service to users in the United States on Sunday just hours after the video-sharing platform went dark in response to a federal ban, which President-elect Donald Trump said he would try to pause by executive order on his first day in office, the Associated Press reports.
Trump said he planned to issue the order to give TikTok’s China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer before the ban takes full effect. He announced the move on his Truth Social account.
TikTok said it shut down the platform late Saturday because of a federal law that required parent company ByteDance to sell its U.S. operation by Sunday. Google and Apple also removed TikTok from their digital stores. The law, which passed with wide bipartisan support in April, allows for steep fines.
While the company that runs TikTok in the U.S. said on X that the steps Trump outlined Sunday provided “the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties,” the TikTok app remained unavailable for download in Apple and Google’s app stores.
