SALT LAKE CITY — When Kayla Fernandez opened up TikTok Sunday morning and saw the platform had been banned, her stomach dropped.
“It was devastating,” said Fernandez, a social media coordinator for the Utah Grizzlies. “All that hard work just down the drain.”
On Saturday night, TikTok users were greeted with a message that said the platform was no longer available due to a law that would go into effect on Sunday. However, by Sunday afternoon, the platform was somewhat restored — although still unavailable for download in Apple and Google’s app stores — after President-elect Donald Trump said he would sign an executive order on his first day of office to delay the ban.
Fernandez is one of many creators and businesses who are already sensing the effects of the ban. She said the popular app has been instrumental in getting the ECHL team on the map.
“We’ve been getting a lot of comments that people have come to games because of TikTok,” she said.
The popular video-based platform has helped the team gain support, Fernandez said. They’ve hit nearly 4 million likes on the app.
“Seeing the ban freaked me out a little bit because we have seen so much success on TikTok,” she said. “It’s helped bolster our other social platforms. To lose our biggest platform was pretty worrying.”
Trump said he planned to issue an order that would give TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, extra time to find an approved buyer before the ban takes full effect. A law, which President Biden signed in April, required that ByteDance sell the app to an approved buyer by Jan. 19 to avoid the ban.
Vincent Lords, a content creator for Paranosis — a page with more than 200,000 followers that features paranormal investigations — said he was able to quit his day job because of the platform.
TikTok is one of more than 100 apps created by ByteDance, a technology firm founded in 2012 by Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yiming. For years, lawmakers and U.S. officials have flagged the platform’s ties to China as a risk to national security.
“This is people’s livelihoods, and as a result of being almost four years on the platform, it’s a community,” Lords said. “It’s kind of like breaking up that community and not letting us have a voice in the manner. It’s frustrating.”
