The former president of the United States, Donald Trump in the last few weeks of his presidency had banned the use of the Chinese based application including TikTok and WeChat.
President Trump, had banned transaction facilities in the States related to these two applications as well as was planning on banning other related form of transaction facilities that could be done through these application, in response to which the use of these two widely used application would have dropped immensely considering that at least WeChat’s actual purpose which used a service for games and payments would have been lost.
However, now that the ruling power has changed and President Joe Biden has taken over the charge, there were ought to some changes in the form of ruling and the decisions taken priory.
The United States, Department of Commerce in a declaration on Monday stated that as per the orders of the current President Biden, they will be canceling the ban on the payment transactions on both TikTok and WeChat. Though the ban on these two applications was implemented in August, Trump in January 2021 gave orders to impose bans on further eight Chinese applications that were being used in the US like Ant Group's Alipay, Tencent's QQ Wallet, however no bans were implemented on these apps.
But why did Trump took such drastic measures to ban two of the most widely used applications in the country? The former president Trump claimed that since both, WeChat and TikTok were acquired to a Chinese company with their roots in China, it can be a national security threat to the US and hence they should cut all ties off with them as they collect a lot of user data and information.
However, Biden canceling out the bans implemented by the former president in no way means that he does not care about the country’s security. He has asked the Commerce Department to observe these two applications carefully and rule out ways in which it can be a form of threat to the nation as well as come up with alternative ways through which they can protect the user data that is acquired by the company or stored in other foreign affiliations.
The Chinese government is rather happy from this decision taken by President and claim it as a positive step considering how the Chinese tech market was put down by the US which resulted in severe losses for the Chinese tech firms.
However, all this is still under processing and no final decisions have been taken as of yet. In a few weeks’ time, the US government will decide on how to unban the said applications and what changes would be brought in their privacy rules.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
H/T: Reuters.
Read next: Your Favorite Apps Collect the Most Personal Data (Here's the Solution)
President Trump, had banned transaction facilities in the States related to these two applications as well as was planning on banning other related form of transaction facilities that could be done through these application, in response to which the use of these two widely used application would have dropped immensely considering that at least WeChat’s actual purpose which used a service for games and payments would have been lost.
However, now that the ruling power has changed and President Joe Biden has taken over the charge, there were ought to some changes in the form of ruling and the decisions taken priory.
The United States, Department of Commerce in a declaration on Monday stated that as per the orders of the current President Biden, they will be canceling the ban on the payment transactions on both TikTok and WeChat. Though the ban on these two applications was implemented in August, Trump in January 2021 gave orders to impose bans on further eight Chinese applications that were being used in the US like Ant Group's Alipay, Tencent's QQ Wallet, however no bans were implemented on these apps.
But why did Trump took such drastic measures to ban two of the most widely used applications in the country? The former president Trump claimed that since both, WeChat and TikTok were acquired to a Chinese company with their roots in China, it can be a national security threat to the US and hence they should cut all ties off with them as they collect a lot of user data and information.
However, Biden canceling out the bans implemented by the former president in no way means that he does not care about the country’s security. He has asked the Commerce Department to observe these two applications carefully and rule out ways in which it can be a form of threat to the nation as well as come up with alternative ways through which they can protect the user data that is acquired by the company or stored in other foreign affiliations.
The Chinese government is rather happy from this decision taken by President and claim it as a positive step considering how the Chinese tech market was put down by the US which resulted in severe losses for the Chinese tech firms.
However, all this is still under processing and no final decisions have been taken as of yet. In a few weeks’ time, the US government will decide on how to unban the said applications and what changes would be brought in their privacy rules.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/BloombergH/T: Reuters.
Read next: Your Favorite Apps Collect the Most Personal Data (Here's the Solution)
