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 to Cloudflare experienced a sharp decline, dropping by as much as 95% after 03:30 UTC (22:30 ET).
Alternatives like RedNote (Xiaohongshu) surge in the US
DNS traffic in the US for TikTok alternatives, driven by RedNote (Xiaohongshu or Little Red Book), has been steadily growing since January 13. It surged on January 19 by as much as 74% around 04:00 UTC (23:00 ET on January 18) compared to the previous week, with growth being less intensive during nighttime in the US (around 22%).
Daily DNS traffic in the US for TikTok alternatives has increased since January 13, reaching as much as 116% growth on January 15. Sunday, January 19, is on track to surpass that growth.
RedNote impacting other countries
DNS traffic for TikTok alternatives, driven by RedNote, has been growing in the last few days, and not only in the US.
The other countries where we observed a clear increase in daily DNS traffic to TikTok alternatives were Mexico (a 500% increase on January 18), Canada (68% on January 18), the UK (53% on January 18), Germany (110% on January 18), and France (75% on January 18). These increases are shown in the graphs below:
Those trends are consistent with apps like RedNote rising on top of the Android and iOS App Stores, according to Data.ai.
President-elect Donald Trump indicated on January 18 that he plans to grant TikTok a 90-day extension following his inauguration on Monday, January 20, 2025.
We will continue monitoring the TikTok ban and share updates through a new blog post or on @CloudflareRadar (X), noc.social/@cloudflareradar (Mastodon), and radar.cloudflare.com (Bluesky).
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UPDATE, January 20, 2025, 17:00 UTC:
On Sunday, January 19, 2025, around 17:30 UTC (12:30 ET), after 14 hours of the shutdown, TikTok announced it was beginning service restoration following assurances from Donald Trump. DNS traffic began to recover slightly after 18:00 but remained near "shutdown" levels for several hours, with traffic from AS396986 (ByteDance) showing a similar trend.
As of Monday, January 20, 2025, TikTok-related domains in the U.S. remain below pre-shutdown levels. Despite some fluctuations overnight, DNS traffic to those domains has been recovering and at 17:00 UTC (11:00 AM ET) is already only 14% lower than the same time last week.