TikTok’s brief shutdown in the United States on Jan. 19, 2025, has folks on social media posting ban message parody memes of the pop-up messages that appeared when they tried to use the video-sharing app.
TikTok went dark on Sunday following the Supreme Court’s ruling mandating the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest its United States-based operations. Users attempting to access TikTok were initially met with a pop-up message stating, “We regret that a U.S. law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable. We’re working to restore our service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned.”

Many people noted that it didn’t take long before the message changed, and in the hours before the app was reinstated, it read, ” Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
Adding to the surreal nature of the situation, TikTok’s downtime was remarkably short-lived. According to CNN, services were reinstated around 12 hours after closing the app.
While people were prepared for TikTok to be shut down on Jan. 19, the app became unusable for anyone who downloaded the app in the United States (regardless of if they lived in America) in the evening on Jan. 18, and led to people taking creative license with the pop-up message’s format. They applied the format to various apps and services, from AMC Theatres to Hinge.
Here are 20 of the funniest TikTok ban message parody memes from around the web:
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