[ad_1]
Remember when the Trump administration thought TikTok was a serious threat to America?
No?
Well, very well. The Trump administration also seems to have forgotten that it planned to ban the Chinese video app, which is very popular with American children.
This ban was due to go into effect yesterday, on the basis of an August decree that has already been amended once. In the initial order, Donald Trump argued that there was “credible evidence” that ByteDance, the owner of China-based TikTok, “could take action that threatens to undermine the national security of the United States. “.
ByteDance’s only option, supposedly, was to sell TikTok to an American owner. But a convoluted and complicated deal to sell some from TikTok to Walmart and Oracle is not yet complete.
And as TikTok’s tens of millions of US users have noticed, TikTok is still working in the US, even though it missed yesterday’s deadline.
Trump’s Commerce Department said last night it was delaying its possible ban. Today, TikTok told a federal court that the Trump administration gave it and ByteDance an additional 15 days to complete its Walmart / Oracle deal.
The extension comes days after TikTok complained that the Trump administration had not said a word about the plan proposed by TikTok. TikTok’s new deadline for finding something is November 27.
But don’t hesitate to be skeptical about this deadline. Trump’s approach to TikTok, as well as WeChat, a China-based messaging app that he has also tried to ban, has been extremely erratic, even by Trump’s standards. On several occasions, Trump has announced that he will ban the app; or that he would force TikTok to sell itself to an American company; or that any agreement would require TikTok to donate a portion of the proceeds from sales to the United States; or that TikTok was going to contribute $ 5 billion to a fund “so that we can educate people on the real history of our country”.
It’s much more likely, in fact, that Trump didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about TikTok and instead hoped that his stance against a Chinese-owned tech company might help him piss off voters and / or voters. donations for this month’s election, which he lost.
But even that seemed like a half-hearted attempt: Other than a few weeks in August and September, Trump rarely mentioned TikTok, WeChat, its proposed bans, or the so far successful legal challenges to those bans.
It would probably be good for US lawmakers to take TikTok seriously: There has never been a consumer app made in China with widespread appeal in the United States, and there is legitimate debate as to whether the app presents real security risks or not, and if it censors content on its massive platform.
Ben Thompson, the US-born tech commentator who lives in Taiwan, for example, argues that the US should ban TikTok because it’s a potentially powerful tool for Chinese propaganda and censorship. Tens of millions of Americans love to use the app to create and watch memes, and probably have no idea who owns the app.
But there’s a good chance this problem will continue to be thrown down the road, straight into the knees of the Biden administration.
[ad_2]
Source link