In a national wide ban, American President, Donald Trump will be signing another executive order to ban popular social apps, TikTok and WeChat from all digital stores in the country. The order will apply to Apple, Google, other platforms on which the apps are available.
President Trump has set his mind on banning the apps on all digital platforms across the country which will block new downloads of TikTok and WeChat. A few months ago, the Trump administration passed two executive orders which gave the developer, ByteDance a deadline to sell TikTok’s US operations to an American company.
The US to ban TikTok and WeChat on Sunday
The US Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross confirmed the reports of the ban on new downloads of the popular Chinese social media apps, TikTok and WeChat. The US President accused both social apps as spying tools of the Chinese government which give data of American users to China. Thus, he initiated the ban on the national security threat.
“Today’s actions prove once again that President Trump will do everything in his power to guarantee our national security and protect Americans from the threats of the Chinese Communist Party,” said U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “At the President’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of U.S. laws and regulations.”
While the threats posed by WeChat and TikTok are not identical, they are similar. Each collects vast swaths of data from users, including network activity, location data, and browsing and search histories. Each is an active participant in China’s civil-military fusion and is subject to mandatory cooperation with the intelligence services of the CCP. This combination results in the use of WeChat and TikTok creating unacceptable risks to our national security.”
Current US users will be able to use the app but will not receive any updates, so eventually, they will have to say goodbye to the video-sharing platform.
However, ByteDance denies all accusations and said,
“We disagree with the decision from the Commerce Department and are disappointed that it stands to block new app downloads from Sunday and ban the use of the TikTok app in the U.S. from Nov. 12. We will continue to challenge the unjust executive order.”
Although it is not happy news for users and developers, tech giants like Apple will be pleased with the order’s effect on the US App Store only. Previously, Apple was concerned over the extent of WeChat’s ban on either all app stores or just in the US. WeChat is China’s predominant app for social interactions, online purchases, audio, and video calling, and more, therefore, if Apple was ordered to remove the app from the Chinese App Store that would have resulted in the decline of Apple’s iPhone sales in the country. The iPhone maker and other US companies like Disney did contact the White House on the issue to limit the ban to the American digital market place only.
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