President Trump has issued orders that would prohibit “any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,” with the companies.
“The spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Trump wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It’s been banned by Joe Biden’s staff, the Navy, Army, departments of State and Homeland Security, and the TSA. A ban on federal employees downloading the app on government-issued devices may soon become law. Additionally, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman called it “fundamentally parasitic” and “spyware.” ByteDance denies the allegations and claims the data of US users is stored in the country, with backups in Singapore.
With over 800 million monthly active users, 30 million of whom are in the US, TikTok saw its userbase surge during the lockdowns. It’s now been downloaded more than 2 billion times.
In the orders, a justification given for the ban is “national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology and services supply chain.” It also claims they could “be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party.” As we noted previously, they also claim to be concerned about how TikTok “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories.”
The move marks an escalation in US-China tensions, and analysts are now expecting retaliation from Beijing. China already blocks many US tech companies, including Facebook and Google, from operating in the country.
