Coco Gauff of the U.S. writes “RIP Tik Tok USA” after defeating Belinda Bencic of Switzerland in a fourth spherical match on the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (AP Photograph/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)
MELBOURNE, Australia — American tennis star Coco Gauff mourned the lack of TikTok’s app again dwelling, writing on a TV digital camera lens “RIP TikTok USA” and drawing a damaged coronary heart proper after successful a match on the Australian Open to succeed in the quarterfinals.
Gauff’s 5-7, 6-2, 6-1 victory over Belinda Bencic within the Grand Slam event’s foremost stadium completed on Sunday afternoon native time in Melbourne — about an hour after TikTok may not be discovered on distinguished app shops on Saturday in the US.
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Tennis gamers at many tournaments typically are handed a pen after a win to allow them to ship no matter ideas they need by way of the lens of a courtside digital camera. On this case, Gauff paused a bit to suppose and stated, “I feel I’m going to go together with this one,” earlier than providing her TikTok message in blue ink.
READ: Australian Open 2025: Coco Gauff drops a set, reaches quarters
On the French Open in June 2022, after reaching her first Grand Slam last as a youngster, Gauff referred to a current spate of mass shootings within the U.S. on the time and wrote in marker: “Peace. Finish gun violence.”
Now 20, Gauff is without doubt one of the high gamers in her sport. She gained the 2023 U.S. Open and is presently ranked No. 3.
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Gauff steadily has posted on TikTok, typically mimicking widespread developments.
“I really feel that is the third or fourth time this has occurred. This time it’s similar to, ‘No matter.’ If I get up and it doesn’t work, nice. I’m accomplished losing my time figuring it out,” Gauff stated earlier in the course of the Australian Open. “I see there’s a brand new app referred to as RedNote that lots of people are migrating over to. So I really feel, regardless, persons are going to be nice as a result of persons are all the time going emigrate to a different app.”
READ: Australian Open 2025: Coco Gauff survives to make the third spherical
She added that she hoped TikTok would survive, calling it “an ideal factor for lots of small companies in our nation, and loads of creators become profitable on it and have the possibility to unfold tales. Personally, me, loads of nice tales I’ve heard are from TikTok and connecting with individuals has been (by means of) TikTok. I hope it’s going to keep, (however) clearly I don’t know all the safety points and issues like that.”
A U.S. federal regulation that will have banned the favored social media platform was scheduled to enter impact. Apple and Google app shops are prohibited from providing TikTok underneath a regulation that required its China-based dad or mum firm, ByteDance, to promote the platform or face a ban within the U.S.
When customers opened the TikTok app, they encountered a pop-up message from the corporate that prevented them from scrolling on movies.
