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TikTok has said it will be forced to “suspend services” in the United States on Sunday if the government does not intervene before the ban goes into effect.
In a statement on Friday, it said the White House and the Justice Department “failed to provide the necessary transparency and assurances to service providers that are essential to maintaining TikTok’s availability.”
It said that if the government did not intervene immediately to ensure the video app was not penalized, it would “be forced to suspend services on January 19”.
The statement follows a Supreme Court decision early Friday that upheld a law banning the app in the United States except for its China-based parent company, ByteDance.
The law, passed in April last year, states that ByteDance must sell the US version of the platform to a neutral party to avoid an outright ban.
TikTok opposed the law, saying it violated the freedom of expression protections of its 170 million users in the country.
But the Supreme Court’s decision means that the US version of the app will be removed from app stores and web hosting services until a buyer is found in the future.
It was thought that the ban would not affect TikTok users who already have the app downloaded on their phones. But since updates will not be available once the ban goes into effect, the app will crash and become unusable over time.
A new statement from TikTok on Friday, however, said that it may not be immediately available to all existing users and those who want to download it.
Online influencers and content creators have been posting videos on the app saying goodbye to their followers ahead of the impending ban.
