TikTok has been a major topic of conversation in the United States for the past week. Since President Trump said that his administration was looking into banning TikTok, many users of the app have been incredibly uncertain about the future of the app's presence in the United States. Now it seems like the future is a little more clear, as the President signed an executive order banning both TikTok and WeChat from the country.
Originally, President Trump had stated that he was going to attempt to force TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its shares to an American based company for fear of user data being stored on Chinese servers. While ByteDance denied these allegations, it did not want to see the app be banned from the States and set about finding a buyer with Microsoft being one of the most interested parties.
However, it seems that President Trump wants to put pressure on that plan, as he signed an executive order Thursday night that would ban TikTok in 45 days if it is not sold by ByteDance. The order asserts that TikTok "automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users" and if left unchecked, the President believes that Americans' personal information would be at the disposal of the Chinese Communist Party.
Shortly after this order was issued for TikTok, a similar executive order was signed for WeChat and its parent company, Tencent. Tencent is another major Chinese based company that has investments in a multitude of businesses across the world, including multiple video game studios like Platinum Games. Like TikTok, WeChat is also being accused of collecting user data that could be used by the Chinese Communist Party.
While users of these apps may be upset at this news, it's not quite over yet. As it stands, the date that President Trump set for when the apps will be banned is just after when Microsoft had set for when it's negotiations with ByteDance will be complete. Although this does put more pressure on the companies to make a deal, there is still some hope for the app.
There is some flawed reasoning on the part of the President in regard to these bans. There are multiple companies that are based in the US that have also been accused of capturing user data on servers, however, the President seems to have no interest in banning sites like Facebook. Simply forcing Chinese companies to sell their shares to a US-based company may not fix the problem, instead just relocating it.
Source: CNN