TikTok ready to totally shut down app in US on SUNDAY as ban looms & fans flock to RedNote
TIKTOK is ready to totally shut down it's app to Americans on Sunday as the federal ban creeps in.
Defiant US social media users have flocked to the Chinese-owned app RedNote in response to the government's shock move.
A federal ban on the platform was passed due to national security concerns.
The government revealed it would enforce the ban unless the app was sold by it's Chinese-owner ByteDance, to a government-approved buyer
Talk of potential buyers had seemed unsuccessful until it was reported Elon Musk was in talks with China this week to buy the platform.
Officials in Bejing were apparently in talks with the Trump's tech tycoon pal, but TikTok has dismissed the claim as "pure fiction".
The January 19 deadline imposed by the US government is just days away with no real hopes of a sale at the moment.
TikTok has sought, at the very least, for a delay in the ban coming into effect as it claims the move would violate the First Amendment, which protects free speech.
The only way this incoming ban can be blocked is by a US Supreme Court decision.
A huge 170 million Americans use the short-form video app, and TikTok believes a third of it's users would abandon it a month into the looming ban.
Many of these US social media users have flocked to another Chinese-owned app called RedNote.
An explosive decision
Analysis by Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun
The "will they, won't they" saga of TikTok's possible ban has been looming for sometime and could come to an almighty conclusion very soon.
It's all over fears about alleged links TikTok owner ByteDance has to the Chinese government - which the firm has long-denied.
The US Justice Department says because TikTok's parent company is from China, it has access to user data and therefore poses "a national-security threat of immense depth and scale".
But it looks like TikTok could planning to play hardball, opting to withdraw from the US entirely rather than go through any forced sale or other arrangement.
This would be an explosive decision for a platform that boasts some 1.6billion active users each month globally - an estimated 170million from the US alone.
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