TikTok ban takes hold: data reveals sharp traffic decline and rapid shift to alternatives
The United States ban on TikTok went into effect on January 19, 2025, and our data showed a clear impact starting after 03:30 UTC (10:30 PM ET on January 18, 2025). The ban was part of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," proposed in Congress, which ordered ByteDance to divest due to alleged security concerns. The bill was signed into law by Congress and President Biden in April 2024, and was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Aggregated data from our 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver shows — as we’ve posted on X — that the TikTok shutdown in the US began to impact DNS traffic to TikTok-related domains on January 19, just after 03:30 UTC (22:30 ET on January 18). This includes DNS traffic not only for TikTok, but also for other ByteDance-owned platforms, such as the CapCut video editor. Traffic dropped by as much as 85% compared to the previous week and showed signs of further decline in the following hours.
Around that time, a message indicating the TikTok ban began appearing for US users.
Analyzing data from autonomous systems or networks, traffic from TikTok owner ByteDance’s network (AS396986) in the US Continue reading



