TikTok Says It Would ‘Go Dark’ Without US Court Intervention

• TikTok said it would “go dark” this month unless the Supreme Court extends the sale deadline.
• TikTok users will likely stop seeing videos after January 19 and the app will leave app stores.
• The company is taking its case against the sell-or-ban law to the Supreme Court on Friday.

TikTok said it would “go dark” in the US later this month if Supreme Court does not extend the January 19 deadline for asset sales set by sale or prohibition law.

During oral arguments in the Supreme Court on Friday, company lawyer Noel Francisco said TikTok’s partners, such as app store hosts and other service providers, will stop working with it if its Chinese owner ByteDance fails to sell its US operations by the 19th number. This will result in TikTok being shut down.

“Essentially, he will cease to operate,” Francisco told the court. “I think that’s a consequence of this law, so I think a short delay here would make sense.”

This means that banning TikTok would not only prevent the app from being downloaded, but would also likely block existing users from viewing the videos. The app will not continue to work in the US as “Fortnite” did, for example, when Apple removed a game from its app store due to a controversy between companies.

“This is not a dispute between two private parties,” G.S. told Business Insider. Hans is a clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School. “This is a dispute between a private party and the government, and the government can quite easily legally stop a company from operating.”

TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the ban on sale or ban law in May. The bill asks Chinese owner ByteDance to split from the US version of TikTok within nine months or be forced to stop operating in the US. Company lost the case in the D.C. Circuit last month, and is now asking the Supreme Court to issue an emergency injunction to halt the sale deadline.

In oral arguments, the company rejected the idea that it could spin off the US version of TikTok from the rest of the company. Francisco described the process as “extremely complex” on any time scale.