President Trump Signs Executive Order to Ban TikTok and WeChat in 45 Days
President Donald Trump has been talking about shutting down TikTok and now he's acted upon it. Last night, he signed an executive order to shut down the use of the Chinese-based apps TikTok and WeChat in 45 days.
Trump cited privacy concerns as the reason he's against the social media networks.
If you have a teenager, you likely know a bit about TikTok, which has gained even more popularity by younger Americans in recent months.
The TikTok community has often been critical of Trump. Earlier this summer, users of TikTok organized by reserving tickets to Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which failed to draw the type of crowds the Trump campaign was expecting.
President Trump said in his order that TikTok and WeChat “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users -- threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information. In addition, WeChat captures the personal and proprietary information of Chinese nationals visiting the United States, thereby allowing the Chinese Communist Party a mechanism for keeping tabs on Chinese citizens who may be enjoying the benefits of a free society for the first time in their lives.”
The Trump administration has said time and time again that the application takes data and is used by the Chinese government.
"All the things that you care that you want to make sure the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t have, we have a responsibility to make sure that the systems that you’re using don’t give them access to that," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said two weeks ago.
Earlier this week, Trump said he was open to changing his mind about TikTok if it was sold to an American company.
"But if somebody and whether it's Microsoft or somebody else buys it, that'll be interesting," Trump said. "I did say that, if you buy it, whatever the price is that goes to whoever owns it, because I guess it's China essentially, but more than anything else, I said, a very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the treasury of the United States because we're making it possible for this deal to happen."