Trump Looks to Ban Tik Tok As Soon As This Weekend
Those Tik Tok "'famous" are fearing the end of stardom right now as President Trump says he will act to ban Tik Tok in the United States as early as this weekend.
NBC News reported Friday, along with other major news outlets, that President Donald Trump announced to reporters aboard Air Force One that he will act to ban the Chinese-owned video app TikTok from the United States. During his flight back to Washington from Florida, the President said, “As far as TikTok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States,” calling the action a “severance.” The President said he could use his emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, insisting, “I have that authority.” He added, “It’s going to be signed tomorrow.”
There have been ongoing discussions by the White House for quite awhile about the popular video-sharing app in the way of security concerns. Most concerns center around the ownership by ByteDance, a Chinese company. Chinese law can compel any domestic company to hand over data it has collected on users.
Although the app is mainly popular with a younger crowd, it does have the ability to track phone locations and users’ metadata, similar to many apps out there right now. The concern is that China has a shown an strong desire for our personal data here in the U.S. Because of that, the company's operations in the U.S. has been under review by the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. was looking at banning TikTok as well as other Chinese social media apps, citing national security concerns. There has also been talk of Microsoft has been in discussions to purchase the video-sharing mobile app from its Chinese owner. There is no confirmation by either company about a sale or if that would change the possibility of a ban.
If you haven't taken a look at what Tik Tok is all about, you may want to. I myself don't post videos, but do find some of the content pretty intriguing to be honest. There is some incredible creativity and talent on there and it can be pretty entertaining.
ByteDance launched TikTok back in 2017. It seems during the pandemic the app grew in major popularity with almost 2 billion downloads in April alone.
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