After a decisive loss at the Supreme Court, the app is set to be blocked in the U.S. starting Sunday, ending its streak of Houdini-like escapes.
In mid-2023, TikTok had just eluded an effort in Congress to ban the video app, the latest Houdini-like escape for the young tech company. For several years, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, lawmakers and officials had trained their sights on the app, saying its Chinese ownership posed a national security risk.
Inside TikTok, a small group of employees started formulating a plan to ensure that the regulatory threat would never reappear, three people with knowledge of the project said. The employees pitched a campaign of TV commercials, messages to users and other public advocacy to turn Washington’s attention elsewhere. They called it Project Achilles.
But TikTok’s leaders lost interest by the end of the year. Several, including Shou Chew, its chief executive, seemed to think the threat of a ban was no longer imminent, the people said. Project Achilles never became reality.
The misreading of the political winds could not have been greater.
Just a few months later, Congress overwhelmingly passed and President Biden signed a law that would ban TikTok unless the app’s owner, ByteDance, sold it to a non-Chinese company. On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the law. TikTok is set to be removed from app stores on Sunday, when the law goes into effect.
The ban will end a remarkable eight-year roller-coaster ride for TikTok in the United States. The company wriggled its way out of political danger time and again. The threats to its very existence came so often, from so many directions, dealing with them became almost second nature for executives — perhaps to the point of complacency.
All the while, TikTok reached new heights of popularity and public influence. It boasts 170 million monthly U.S. users, giving the company confidence that those masses could help beat back whatever regulators aimed its way. Behind the scenes, TikTok conducted secretive negotiations with government officials and advertising blitzes aimed at rescuing it.
But in the end, the company ran into a well-organized and focused effort among Washington officials that it could not stop. Its biggest gamble yet was that it could overturn the law and avoid a sale altogether — a bet that failed.
Many social media companies have skyrocketed in popularity only to fade away nearly as fast, and others, like Facebook and X, have faced tough scrutiny in Washington. But none have been effectively forced to erase their presence in the country. Only TikTok will have that distinction.
“The vast majority of people I’ve talked to have said TikTok will figure something out, without a very clear answer to what that something will be, because they always have,” said Joe Marchese, a venture capitalist and former TV network executive. People “can’t picture it not working out.”
TikTok is already appealing directly to President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has vowed to save the app, somehow. Mr. Chew posted a direct appeal to Mr. Trump on TikTok after the Supreme Court decision, thanking him “for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.” TikTok declined to comment on Project Achilles.
Late Friday, the company said that unless the Biden administration made it clear to service providers that they could continue providing services to the app after the law took effect, “unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on Jan. 19.”
TikTok users are grieving, often couching their dismay in dark humor. Few seem to believe the app will be blocked on Sunday.
“In 2020 I did an interview about the TikTok ban, and I was saying the same thing: ‘I don’t think it’s going to get banned,’” said Yumna Jawad, a recipe developer and content creator who goes by Feel Good Foodie. “Five years later, I’m still doing the same interview.”
It ‘Can Change Somebody’s Life’
Before it was TikTok, it was Musical.ly, a Chinese lip-syncing app popular with teenagers and tweens.
Musical.ly’s two founders had nearly run out of venture funding for an education app when they decided to pivot to D.I.Y. music videos in 2014. The app let users film over 15-second clips of popular songs, often accompanied by a distinct brand of hand choreography.
As Musical.ly grew, ByteDance took notice. It paid around $1 billion for Musical.ly in 2017 and ultimately folded its technology and users into an app that ByteDance had launched internationally only a few months earlier: TikTok. By 2018, TikTok was roaring into the rankings of the most downloaded apps in the United States.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, TikTok became a mainstay in Americans’ lives. The app, with its endless stream of short-form entertainment, was perfectly positioned for a period when many people had more free time than ever. Or, as the musician Curtis Roach put it in the video that would make him one of the pandemic’s earliest breakout stars, a time when many people were “bored in the house.”
“I joined just to post my little funny videos, and TikTok turned into something that can change somebody’s life,” Mr. Roach said in a recent interview.
TikTok seemingly left no corner of culture untouched.
Emma Straub, an author and owner of the independent Books Are Magic bookstores, recalled seeing backlist titles like Madeline Miller’s “The Song of Achilles” suddenly in high demand after BookTok made them popular again. In the culinary world, TikTok sent feta cheese and, later, cucumbers flying off the shelves as home cooks clamored to recreate viral recipes. Jane Wickline leveraged parody videos into a role on “Saturday Night Live.” TikTok was the most downloaded app in the United States and world in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Charli D’Amelio livestreaming for her family’s Hulu reality show in 2021
Almost overnight, teenagers became household names. By November 2020, Charli D’Amelio had amassed 100 million followers, making her, at that time, the most-followed person on TikTok in the world. She became, at age 16, famous for recording dance videos in her bedroom. By 2021, her family would have a reality showon Hulu.
“It was a vehicle for my kids and us to follow their dreams,” said Marc D’Amelio, Ms. D’Amelio’s father.
Regulatory Reality
As TikTok’s popularity surged, so did scrutiny from the U.S. government. But TikTok managed to evade almost everything officials threw at it.
The first serious effort to ban the app in the United States came in the summer of 2020 from Mr. Trump, during his first term as president. TikTok was already on edge after a ban in India. Then Mr. Trump raised concerns that ByteDance could hand over sensitive TikTok user data to the Chinese government.