Inside TikTok's weekend of whiplash

At the Sax Restaurant and Lounge on the eve of Donald Trump's second inauguration, it seemed like business as usual for TikTok.

The wildly popular video app was sponsoring a Washington, DC, party for a gaggle of conservative influencers sporting bright-red Make America Great Again hats. Bryce Hall wandered around in a black bow tie as other creators sipped cocktails and danced to Don Omar's "Danza Kuduro." Guests combated the frigid temperatures outside with TikTok-branded beanies and earmuffs.

Amid the gaiety, it was easy to forget that just 24 hours earlier, the ByteDance-owned social media platform had briefly gone dark for its 170 million American users.

It was just one twist during a whirlwind January weekend that featured everyone from Neil Gorsuch to Trump to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What began with a bombshell Supreme Court decision on Friday morning culminated in TikTok CEO Shou Chew as a guest at Trump's inauguration, hobnobbing with tech leaders like Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai.

As TikTok continues to navigate a divest-or-ban law designed to target the company's connections to China, the app is back — for now. But the weekend left some feeling unsettled.

"This situation showed how quickly you can have something and then that something can be taken away," said creator Kyle Barber.

How quickly? Let's turn back the clock.

Friday, 10 a.m. ET: A decision comes down

After months of buildup, including a last-ditch attempt by the app to preserve its US presence, the Supreme Court dropped its opinion on TikTok Inc. v. Garland on Friday morning, ruling that a law forcing a sale of the app was constitutional.

TikTok then had 38 hours to broker a sale of its US assets or "go dark" when its service providers cut ties to avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in potential fines.

From the moment the court publicized its ruling, fear set in among some of the app's creators and partners. TikTok is often more than just a tool for mindless scrolling: It can be a source of substantial income for small businesses selling products or a platform to rocket-launch a career as a creator.

In spite of this, many TikTokers, advertisers, and other businesses had spent months shrugging off the threat of a shutdown. Internally, it was "business as usual," as one current TikTok staffer put it. The Supreme Court ruling changed all that.

"After the Supreme Court ruling hit and they still hadn't announced a buyer, it's like, OK, this thing could be gone," said Barber, who has around 40,000 followers on the app. "So immediately I had to go into emergency mode, and I was spending all this time trying to archive my content."

Some influencers had contingency plans in their contracts that dictated they would move sponsorships to other apps in the event TikTok went dark. Others spread out across different social platforms, like Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, and newcomers like RedNote.

To many in the TikTok community, it was still unclear what would happen next. A week earlier, a lawyer for the company told the Supreme Court that the app would "go dark" and essentially "stop operating" on January 19 without legal or political intervention.

When Chew finally emerged with a TikTok message around 12:30 p.m. on Friday, he didn't say what would happen over the weekend.

He said TikTok had been fighting to "protect the constitutional right to free speech" for Americans who use the app. "On behalf of everyone at TikTok and all our users across the country, I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States," he said.

Users flooded the comments section of Chew's video. One pleaded with Chew not to sell the app: "[I]t won't be the same."

"TikTok has gotten me through some of my darkest moments in the past 5 years," another commented. "I'm eternally grateful for my time here and will miss it