After TikTok went dark Saturday night, Atlanta influencers and users entered a temporary period of mourning — only to have the app come back online Sunday after President-elect Donald Trump pledged to halt the ban when he takes office Monday.
The app, used by 170 million Americans, issued a pop-up message Saturday around 10:30 p.m. that it was not available, hours before the ban was set to take effect Sunday.
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now,” the message read. “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!”
By Sunday afternoon, TikTok was back in service for many users.
TikTok announced on X that it was in the process of restoring service after Trump said Sunday he will issue an executive order Monday, his first day in office, to stall the ban. That is intended to give TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance more time to find a buyer and sell the widely-popular app.
“The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order,” he said.
“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 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive,” the social media platform said.
In the hours without TikTok, Atlanta influencers took to Instagram to mourn the loss of a platform that connected them to millions of users and made them millions of dollars through brand deals.
Food content creator Brittnee Gaines, with over 500,000 followers on TikTok, posted on Instagram that she sobbed on the floor after posting her last TikTok.
“Love you, bye,” she said.
Metro Atlanta native Leon Ondieki, who boasted over 4.5 million followers on TikTok, posted Saturday night on Instagram, “RIP @tiktok.”
Ondieki told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last March that many companies bring their initial brand deals to TikTok due to its virality, making it a lucrative platform for influencers.
But the looming threat of a TikTok ban last year spurred him to build his presence on other social media platforms, like YouTube and Instagram, and diversify revenue streams.
It’s a strategy that other Atlanta influencers including Jake Holland, an avid geek culture consumer and reviewer, adopted.
“Glad to have learned from Vine’s unfortunate demise and put time & effort into more than one platform,” Holland posted on Instagram last week.
Vine was the first mainstream short-form social media, launched in 2013, where users could post up to six-second-long video clips. Twitter, now known as X, shut down Vine in 2016 amid financial difficulties.
In an homage to TikTok, Holland raved about the app, where he was just shy of a million followers.
“Rare to experience lightning in a bottle TWICE but Vine + TikTok brought me some truly unreal experiences AND more importantly a multitude of new friends that I never would’ve met otherwise,” he said.
Holland, who has over 100,000 followers on Instagram, added he is grateful for what he called a “life-altering” app.
Free speech groups have called the move to ban TikTok a violation of the First Amendment and harmful to democracy.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief on Dec. 17 urging the Supreme Court to block legislation that would effectively ban the app in the U.S. beginning Jan. 19.
After the Supreme Court ruled it would not block the ban, Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project, said Friday, “By refusing to block this ban, the Supreme Court is giving the executive branch unprecedented power to silence speech it doesn’t like, increasing the danger that sweeping invocations of ‘national security’ will trump our constitutional rights.”
PEN America similarly called the ban an “alarming precedent” for addressing legitimate privacy and security concerns on social media platforms.
“Restricting access to foreign media is a hallmark of repressive governments, and we should always be wary when national security is invoked to silence speech,” the advocacy group said Friday.
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