President Trump told reporters on AirForce One that he could use "emergency economic powers or an executive order" to ban TikTok from the US. The decision continues President Trump's antagonism with China. Other instances included raising tariffs which sparked the trade war, putting restrictions on companies like Huawei and ZTE and blaming it for the coronavirus.
Earlier, there were reports that Microsoft
TikTok's Growth
TikTok has been remarkably successful and upended the social media landscape. It's similar to Vine in which people made short videos but that app was acquired by Twitter
TikTok was released in China in 2016 but became available in the U.S. in 2018 after merging with Musical.ly. Users upload short dance, lip-sync, comedy, and other types of videos that are under a minute long. The app's algorithm spits out recommendations based on what videos a user watches and engages with.
In the last couple of years, it's the most downloaded app on the Apple
TikTok's Controversies
However, the company is also controversial with some seeing it as closely tied to the Chinese government. It's already been banned in India. Content that is critical of the Chinese government has already been banned on the app. Companies like Amazon
Other concerns about the app are that it aggressively mines user data which is more worrisome given its close ties to the Chinese government. Its privacy policy does state that it has the right to share any information with Chinese authorities. Engineers who've looked at the app's source code reveals that it's unusually intrusive in capturing users' hardware information, information about other apps, network-related information, GPS pin coding, and several other unusual features that are remotely configurable. All of this data has nothing to do with the actual, TikTok product.
TikTok has been proactive in trying to alleviate these concerns by headquartering its parent company, ByteDance, outside of China. It also hired a former Disney