United States

Trump’s second inauguration: live updates and how to watch

Tech leaders are set to have a big presence.

On January 20th, Donald Trump is set to be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States to serve his second term. Immediately after his victory, many tech leaders publicly congratulated Trump and started making moves to win his favor, including schmoozing with the incoming president at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and making donations to his inauguration committee.

Tech leaders should have a visible presence at Trump’s inauguration, with Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Shou Zi Chew, Sundar Pichai, and Sam Altman all reported to be present. Musk is also scheduled to speak at a pre-inauguration rally, and Zuckerberg will reportedly host a black-tie event on Inauguration Day.

We’ll be covering the event and how tech leaders are a part of it.

How to watch Donald Trump’s inauguration

C-SPAN will be hosting a livestream on YouTube. The livestream is scheduled to begin at 7AM ET, and the swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for 12PM ET. The inauguration will take place indoors at the United States Capitol Rotunda because of projected cold weather.

Published on 19 January 2025 | 2:00 pm

The tech to build the holodeck

Gaussian splatting, a new way of capturing 3D content, is taking the AR / VR industry by storm — and could one day allow anyone to create photorealistic 3D worlds.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Published on 19 January 2025 | 1:00 pm

New year, new Switch, new Severance

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 67, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy Switch week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been watching Black Doves and The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, reading about Lorne Michaels and rodeos and Ben Shapiro, restarting Twin Peaks in honor of David Lynch, wading nervously into Lemon8 and RedNote, catching up on old episodes of Working It Out, and watching altogether too many Balatro strategy videos.

I also have for you my most anticipated gadget of the year, the new season of Severance, an incredibly cool tech design exhibit to explore, a nifty new AI productivity tool, and much more. This week has been wild, with the potential TikTok ban and the upcoming US inauguration and seemingly 40,000 other things happening — but we’ve got some great ways to decompress. Let’s dive in.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / watching / playing / cooking / building / cutting into small pieces this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer,...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Published on 19 January 2025 | 1:00 pm

Apple says it’s following the law by removing TikTok from the App Store

With TikTok, CapCut, and Marvel Snap shut down in the US, Apple has taken the unusual step of articulating why it’s following the law banning ByteDance apps and removing them from the App Stores for the Mac, iPhone, and other devices.

Before the ban went into effect, the Biden administration released a statement saying enforcement of the law “must fall to the next Administration.” Still, it didn’t stop the law from taking effect this weekend after TikTok’s appeal to the Supreme Court failed.

The support page from Apple says:

Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.

It goes on to say that people who already have the apps installed won’t have them removed, but at least for the time being, redownloading or restoring them on a new device will not be possible, along with making any in-app purchases or subscriptions, but subscriptions can be canceled.

Meanwhile, people who visit the US from other countries where they’re still available won’t be able to download or update apps while inside US borders.

Apple also provided a list of “some” of the apps linked to ByteDance that are affected:

• TikTok
• TikTok Studio
• TikTok Shop Seller Center
• CapCut
• Lemon8
• Hypic
• Lark - Team Collaboration
• Lark - Rooms Display
• Lark Rooms Controller
• Gauth: AI Study Companion
• Marvel Snap

Now, more than an entire day is left before the Trump administration is sworn in. TikTok pushed for a more definitive statement about the legal risks providers like Apple and Google might face for defying the law in the meantime, but it never came as the White House called TikTok’s response a “stunt.”

Now Apple is making clear that until something changes, it’s following the law as written, and it appears Google is doing the same thing. Google, Apple, and TikTok have not responded to requests for comment from The Verge.

Published on 19 January 2025 | 7:27 am

Marvel Snap is banned, just like TikTok

The divest-or-ban law aimed at TikTok is also taking down other ByteDance-linked apps, including the popular card game Marvel Snap. The app suddenly cut off access Saturday night, seemingly without warning, surprising gamers who weren’t aware of its connection to ByteDance.

The card game battler set in the Marvel universe is developed by Second Dinner, which is based in California. But the game is published by Nuverse, a company owned by ByteDance. As a result, it’s subject to the same shutdown order.

In a statement on X, Second Dinner called the takedown a surprise and said, “Marvel Snap isn’t going anywhere. We’re actively working on getting the game up as soon as possible and will update you once we have more to share.”

Just before the calendar turned over to January 19th, 2025, the game disappeared from the App Store for iPad and iPhone players and from Google Play for players on Android. For players on PC, the game is still listed in Steam at the moment, but many players are reporting they were signed out and can’t sign back in.

An in-game message now tells players:

Sorry, Marvel Snap isn’t available right now

A law banning Marvel Snap has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use Marvel Snap for now. Rest assured, we’re working to restore our service in the U.S. Please stay tuned!

Oddly, unlike TikTok, it doesn’t appear that players were given much warning about the law’s effect, and many people may not have realized it was even connected to ByteDance, including people who were still spending money on in-game items expecting to be able to keep playing it.

Other ByDance apps quickly disappeared from app stores along with TikTok, including Lemon8 and CapCut. The effect on other ByteDance-linked apps is mixed; however, it may take time to remove them. The Lark app that offers a Slack-like collaboration platform was available initially but has now been removed, while other Nuverse-published games, like Earth: Revival - Deep Underground and Ragnarok X: 3rd Anniversary, are still available in the App Store as of this writing, just after midnight ET on the 19th.

Update, January 19th: Noted reports that Marvel Snap PC players can’t log in and added a statement from game developer Second Dinner.

Published on 19 January 2025 | 5:17 am

TikTok ban: all the news on the app’s shutdown in the US

TikTok shut down US access on January 18th, just before the law banning it took effect.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Published on 19 January 2025 | 3:57 am

TikTok shuts down in the US

TikTok has gone dark in the US now that the ban-or-divest law passed last year is taking effect. The app has been removed from both Apple and Google’s app stores, it’s unavailable on the web, and users who open the app are blocked from viewing videos.

The shutdown has the astonishing effect of removing a social network used by 170 million people in the US, according to TikTok’s own numbers. While other social media platforms have experienced outages, even prolonged ones, no network as big as TikTok has simply shut down without any indication of if or when it will come back online.

This is despite the Biden administration saying it’s passing enforcement responsibilities on to the Trump administration and calling TikTok’s threat to go offline a “stunt.” TikTok has insisted that without clearer assurances, it has to close up shop in the US.

Inside TikTok, a memo to employees said that, “President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office” on January 20th and that “teams are working tirelessly to bring our app back to the U.S. as soon as possible.”

A warning message started appearing in TikTok’s app around 9PM ET on Saturday evening telling users of the pending shutdown:

We regret that a US law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19th and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable.

We’re working to restore our service in the US as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned.

The app began blocking users around 10:30PM ET. A message now appears saying the app “isn’t available right now” but that the company expects a resolution under President-elect Trump:

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!

Several other apps owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, have also been taken offline, including the video editor CapCut and the social platform Lemon8.

Screenshot: The Verge

The ban-or-divest law, which goes into effect on Sunday, effectively bans TikTok unless ByteDance sells much of its stake in the company. But ByteDance has shown little sign of being willing to sell, even as the deadline rapidly approached. Instead, TikTok sued the US over the law, ultimately losing in a Supreme Court case this past week.

TikTok’s new strategy appears to be relentlessly pandering to Trump, who, despite initially calling for the TikTok ban, has recently indicated that he wants to find a way to keep it around. Earlier today, he floated a 90-day extension of ByteDance’s deadline to sell.

The political game of hot potato, where no one wants to be seen as responsible for banning TikTok, suggests that the app may not be gone for good. But with no definitive plan coming from Biden, Trump, ByteDance, or TikTok, it’s unclear exactly how long the ban could hold.

Published on 19 January 2025 | 3:35 am

How to bulk download and save your TikTok videos

There’s a general sense of doom on the TikTok feeds these days, and no wonder: it looks like the video service may be banned in the US as of January 19th. TikTok creators are offering satirical goodbyes to their Chinese spies and wondering how quickly they can download the several hundred — or thousand — videos they have up on the service.

TikTok itself apparently doesn’t like the idea of allowing its creators to bulk download their videos. You can download — in TXT or JSON format — a certain amount of your data, which, according to the support page, “may include but is not limited to your username, watch video history, comment history, and privacy settings.” When I tried it, it did not include my videos.

You can also share individual videos — the same way you can any file — but if you’ve got a library of a couple of hundred or more TikTok videos, that’s going to be quite a job. In that case, it’s a lot better to have a bulk download strategy.

To find out how to do that, I went into TikTok and waded through a group of videos offering different methods for downloading your content. I tried several of the methods and found three that worked relatively painlessly. (All, incidentally, need to be done on a computer rather than a phone.)

A caveat before I begin: not being an actual TikTok creator, I only had two published TikTok videos on my account, which I had made as an experiment some time ago. As a result, it didn’t take much time for me to download them using any of the methods. If you’re a true TikTok creator, expect downloads and conversions to take some time.

The easy way: use Repurpose.io

Several people recommended an app called Repurpose.io. This is not a free app — it costs $35 a month or $349 a year. For a short time, Repurpose.io was offering free downloads from TikTok to Google Drive and Dropbox but had to withdraw the offer “due to high demand.” However, you still get to download 10 videos for free over 14 days, so you can try it out first.

Repurpose.io lets you distribute your content on different platforms: you simply tell it where to upload the videos (besides TikTok, it will pull data from Instagram, YouTube, Zoom, and a number of other services) and where you want it to send them (besides Instagram and other services, you can save them to Dropbox, SoundCloud, Google Drive, and other apps). You can schedule regular transfers, repurpose only future content or all existing content, and even create clips (if, for example, you are sending YouTube videos to TikTok).

Screenshot: Repurpose.io

When I tried it, Repurpose.io easily picked up my two TikTok videos and transferred them to my Google Drive in a couple of minutes. While it should take a lot longer if you have, say, several hundred videos, the interface keeps you up to date on which videos have been transferred and how many are left.

The paid app allows you to transfer an unlimited number of published videos to up to five different accounts. It could make a lot of sense if you are a dedicated TikTok video creator and are thinking of moving your videos to another service.

The interesting way: use the DevTools console

(Update: as of January 18th, DownloadTok appears to be unavailable with a 503 error. Another site, Snaptik, may be available.)

If you don’t mind playing a little with code, there’s a free way to do it as well. A consultant named Joanne Moxam has published a handy step-by-step YouTube video on how to use Chrome’s browser console to save all your links in one fell swoop, move the data to a spreadsheet, and then use an online tool to bulk download your videos.

Below, I’ve summarized the steps that Moxam suggests (which I successfully tried). She strongly recommends that you do this by using the Chrome browser.

• Go to your Profile page (by clicking on your personal icon in the top-right corner).
• Bring up the browser console by hitting the F12 key. (If you’re on a Mac, you may need to use Fn-F12.) You’ll see a window open on the right filled with code; if you’re not used to that, don’t let it bother you — you won’t have to deal too much with it. Just make sure that the menu at the very top (which will say Elements / Console / Sources) has Console underlined.
• At the bottom of the console, where there is a single >, paste in the following:

let goToBottom = setInterval(() => window.scrollBy(0, 400), 1000);

According to Moxam, this scrolls all your videos down to the bottom, making them part of a single window so they can be selected.

Screenshot: TikTok

Note: you may see a warning not to paste code into the console that you don’t understand; you’ll be asked to type “allow pasting” and hit Enter first. Go ahead; I used both of these codes without an issue.

• Now enter the second code, which will automatically select and download a CSV file of your links to all the videos in your profile to your computer. It’s a bit long: here’s a link to Moxam’s code.
• The resulting file will be called my_data.csv.
• Import the CSV file to a spreadsheet.

Now you can use the links to do a bulk download of your videos. Moxam recommends a free online service called TOKdownload, which is what I used.

• Copy the links from the spreadsheet and paste them into the designated field. (Note: since I was only downloading a couple of videos, I had no problems; as Moxam suggests, if you’re dealing with large numbers, you may want to download in batches of 50 or so in order to not overwhelm the app.)
• Click the Download button.

Screenshot: TOKdownload

• The app will download and process the links both as the videos and covers. It could take a while.
• Once it’s done, you’ll get buttons to Download All Videos and Download All Covers. Click on the former, and you will get a zip file containing MP4 files of your videos.

If you’re still unsure of yourself, you can go through Moxam’s video — she’s slow and careful in her instructions. And make sure to also check her associated webpage for any updates.

The roundabout way: use a Chrome extension

There are also a number of browser extensions that can help you download your content. This particular method is courtesy of TikToker bari.cait — it involves using a free Chrome app in a somewhat roundabout but effective way. You can find the directions in bari.cait’s TikTok video; I tried it and it worked nicely on my two posts.

• First, if you’re planning to download your own videos, you’re going to need a “burner” TikTok account — in other words, an account that is not your original one. Why? Because the app that you’ll use only lets you download videos you favorite or videos from people you follow (and you can’t exactly follow yourself). If you have any trouble creating a second account, perhaps see if you can borrow a friend’s — or have a friend download your videos for you.
• Open your new TikTok account on the web and follow your own regular account (the one with all your videos in it).
• Download the Chrome app myfaveTT from the Chrome Web Store and install it. You’ll have to give it access to your files.
• Go back to your TikTok page and click on the myfaveTT icon, which should now be in your extensions list. If you don’t see it, click on the extension icon in the upper right of your Chrome browser — it looks like a file folder — which provides a drop-down list of your extensions. Make sure myfaveTT is activated.
• Reload your TikTok page. You should now have the myfaveTT sidebar on the left side of your window.

Screenshot: myfaveTT / TikTok

• The app gives you the choice of downloading all your likes, your Favorites, or the people you follow. Select the last. You’ll get a list of all the people that your new account is following; make sure yours is the only one chosen.
• You’ll then be asked to select a folder to save the videos to (if this is the first time you’re using the app, it will ask you to create a new empty folder). Then go ahead and hit Next.
• The app will download the videos associated with that account. How long it will take will depend on how many videos there are to download. When it’s done, the app will let you know. The MP4 videos will be in your new folder under data > Following > [number] > videos.

Backups are always a good idea

There are actually a number of browser and mobile apps available that will let you download and save your TikTok videos. If you don’t have access to a computer and must use your phone, you may find the mobile apps useful, but I tried a couple and found them awkward to use, usually limited to one video at a time, and (unless you were willing to pay) ad-heavy.

However you do it — and even if there should be some kind of last-minute reprieve for TikTok — it is always a good idea to back up your online videos, especially if they are either personally significant to you or represent creative work that you will want to hold on to and look back on in the years to come.

Update, January 18th, 2025: This article was originally published on January 15th and has been updated to add the method using myfaveTT and to note that DownloadTok appears to be unavailable.

Published on 19 January 2025 | 3:30 am

TikTok starts warning US users it will be “temporarily unavailable”

TikTok is officially going dark in the United States now that a federal ban on the app is set to go into effect on January 19th. Around 9PM ET, the app began notifying people in the US with a message that said the ban will “make our services temporarily unavailable.”

The message goes on to say that TikTok is “working to restore our service in the US as quickly as possible” — an outcome that will require action from the incoming Trump administration one way or another. A similar message is showing up in the CapCut video editor, which is also owned by TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

Inside TikTok, an internal memo viewed by The Verge calls the news “disappointing” but tells employees that, “President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office” on the 20th, and “teams are working tirelessly to bring our app back to the U.S. as soon as possible.” Shortly after the memo was shared with employees, both TikTok and Capcut started showing the same line about Trump to users.

TikTok crashed into this outcome somewhat chaotically. It has known this was the deadline for being banned since Biden signed the bill in April, but the company never appeared to have a backup plan to save itself if the Supreme Court ruled the law was constitutional, which happened on Friday. At the same time, TikTok was promising advertisers it would sort things out as recently as last night.

TikTok warned on Friday that it would be forced to go dark if the Biden administration didn’t promise to delay enforcement of the law penalties on TikTok’s service providers, like Apple and Google, which can be fined thousands of dollars per US user once the ban goes into effect. In response, the Biden administration said it had already passed enforcement responsibilities on to the Trump administration and called TikTok’s threat to go offline a “stunt.”

Trump — who tired to ban TikTok five years ago — has indicated he plans to extend the deadline for the ban by 90 days via an executive order once he is sworn in on January 20th. It’s not clear if he will use the provision in the law that allows for a delay if a sale is pending, or if he even has that option once the ban goes into effect. TikTok’s users are decidedly upset, of course, although none of them seem to be pressuring the company to sell as much as they’re pressuring politicians from both parties to rescind the ban.

Update, January 18th: Noted that TikTok and CapCut app shutdowns have begun in the US.

Published on 19 January 2025 | 2:00 am

Genshin Impact’s developer to pay $20 million fine to settle FTC charges

The Federal Trade Commission announced on Friday that Genshin Impact developer Cognosphere has agreed to a $20 million settlement and several restrictions on how it sells its loot boxes and manages children’s personal data. According to the FTC, the company “actively marketed” its loot boxes to children and misled players about their odds of winning prizes.

Cognosphere allegedly also “deceived children and other users about the real costs of in-game transactions,” by requiring them to buy virtual money that involved multiple currency exchanges. Players often spent “hundreds of dollars on prizes they stood little chance of winning,” according to Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine. For years, loot boxes have been likened to a form of legal gambling.

The complaint, filed by the Department of Justice, also accuses the Genshin Impact developer of marketing to kids using approaches like posts on social media channels and in-game banners. The company then allegedly collected their personal information in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule. Once the settlement is approved, the company is required to delete any data for children under 13 whose parents haven’t consented to their data being collected.

Other requirements of the settlement include that Cognosphere must offer an option to buy loot boxes directly and not just through virtual money. It’s also forbidden from misrepresenting pricing, features, and winning odds for loot boxes, and it must disclose exchange rates for multi-tiered virtual currency.

Published on 18 January 2025 | 11:55 pm