The decision of the US government to work towards banning TikTok was a pretty momentous occasion. The banning of a social media app is an unusual move for a country that prides itself on facilitating freedom of speech, but political machinations against the app’s home country as well as questionable data privacy policies on the app’s part have lead to the US making this almost unheard of decision.
While some have criticized this decision as being politically motivated as well as being put in place to artificially prop up local social media platforms that have been struggling to compete with TikTok, the fact of the matter is that a ban was impending and it turns out that the ban has just been announced in full force.
It is important to note that the app itself isn’t directly being banned, rather it is being forced to sell its US subsidiary off to an American company. Oracle has been making plans to becoming a partner of TikTok and create a separate version of it for the US, and it’s highly likely that these plans would go through since TikTok’s parent company ByteDance wouldn’t want to deal with the loss of the highly coveted and influential US market.
However, in spite of the fact that the US was supposed to ban the app only if a deal didn’t come through, president Donald Trump had signed an executive order that would mean that the app would no longer be available on the app store for new downloads. This has now been enforced and while this doesn’t mean that people that use TikTok would no longer be able to use the app anymore it does indicate that the US is trying to put even more pressure on the app’s parent company to quickly make a decision that would speed up the process by which it would be acquired by a US company.
Photo: Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images
Read next: TikTok is considering Kevin Systrom to appoint as the new CEO
While some have criticized this decision as being politically motivated as well as being put in place to artificially prop up local social media platforms that have been struggling to compete with TikTok, the fact of the matter is that a ban was impending and it turns out that the ban has just been announced in full force.
It is important to note that the app itself isn’t directly being banned, rather it is being forced to sell its US subsidiary off to an American company. Oracle has been making plans to becoming a partner of TikTok and create a separate version of it for the US, and it’s highly likely that these plans would go through since TikTok’s parent company ByteDance wouldn’t want to deal with the loss of the highly coveted and influential US market.
However, in spite of the fact that the US was supposed to ban the app only if a deal didn’t come through, president Donald Trump had signed an executive order that would mean that the app would no longer be available on the app store for new downloads. This has now been enforced and while this doesn’t mean that people that use TikTok would no longer be able to use the app anymore it does indicate that the US is trying to put even more pressure on the app’s parent company to quickly make a decision that would speed up the process by which it would be acquired by a US company.
Photo: Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images
Read next: TikTok is considering Kevin Systrom to appoint as the new CEO
