The president of the United States, Donald Trump says that he plans to ban a short-video sharing app as soon as possible citing security reasons. Trump administration alleges the spying nature of the app due to its relationship with the Chinese government.
In early July, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo first revealed that the country is considering to ban the social networking app, TikTok. An independent report suggests that the Chinese-owned company is tracking and collecting the user data of the US citizens through the app and sharing it with the Chinese Government.
President Trump then told the reporters on Friday, July 31 that his administration is banning the app in the US. The president told the reporters on AirForce One that he may use an executive order or the emergency economic powers to achieve his plan. However, there lies a series of technical as well as legal issues if the president orders the permanent ban of the app. The main issue in the country would be a threat to free speech if the president bans the app.
But earlier that day Bloomberg reported that Trump has announced a decision to China-based ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok to divest the US operations. He threatened the tech company that he would ban the app by August 1, if the company doesn’t comply with the decision. However, later that day, another report claimed that the president never liked that decision, instead, he wants to ban the app very soon.
Trump and other politicians have raised the problem with the usage of a popular social platform with over 80 million users in the US. The Democratic National Committee had already warned the state parties, and committees to be extra careful while using the app. The running president for the 2020 election, Joe Biden has already asked his staff to remove the app from their phones.
On Saturday, the Chinese-based tech company, ByteDance agreed to divest TikTok’s US operations following Trump’s strong pressure. Fearing the ban in the US, ByteDance negotiated a preliminary deal with Microsoft to sell TikTok. The report claims that the details of the deal between the companies were sent to the president for review. The details mentioned that Microsoft will look over the data management responsibilities in the country. But on Sunday, Microsoft held the initial deal with the tech company. Microsoft later confirmed that CEO Satya Nadella and President Trump will have the conversation first and then discuss the deal with ByteDance.
