‘Terrifying’: Critics blast TikTok for ‘sucking up Trump’ to announce US ban

Social media users in the US were outraged by TikTok’s shout-out to President-elect Donald Trump after the platform, which went dark late Saturday, spoke out about a federal ban it described as “unfortunately” preventing people from using the app to use.

Millions of TikTok users who expected to scroll through videos on the app were instead met with a pop-up message informing them that the platform was “lucky” with Trump’s interest in finding “a solution to his U.S. activities after he was sworn in. on Monday.

Trump said in a telephone interview with “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on Saturday that he will do so “most likely” provide for a 90-day extension to the platform’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to avoid a TikTok ban by selling its US assets.

Had TikTok warned earlier that it would go dark on Sunday unless the Biden administration provided more “clarity and certainty” to third-party service providers like Apple and Google that they would not enforce the law when a ban took effect.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred to TikTok’s threats as a “stunt” and stressed that “actions to implement this law will be the responsibility of the next administration.”

President Joe Biden signed the law last April to force the sale of TikTok, and the Supreme Court upheld it on Friday.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who will reportedly attend Trump’s swearing-in on Monday, shared a video after the Supreme Court rulingwhere he said the company was “grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform.”

Trump, who has promised to ‘save’ the app, mainly wanted to ban the platform in 2020 before flipping on it ahead of last year’s election.

Social media users on X, formerly called Twitter, mocked TikTok for highlighting Trump in its pop-up message about the shutdown.

“TikTok has a banner that appears to all US users saying ‘TikTok is now banned, sorry, but Trump will fix it, stay tuned 🥹🥹’ is soooo weird and scary, like this is actually just a whole plan to to be clouded to be liked children,” wrote one user.

“lmao TikTok literally has Trump suck-up built into the app. I guess they just jumped ahead in the race of ‘tech leaders prostrating themselves before the new administration,'” said another message.

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