President Trump has said he will take action to ban the Chinese owned TikTok as soon as Saturday. “We’re banning them from the United States.” Trump said. Some lawmakers have called for the ban to protect national security. TikTok has denied that it shares data collected from its users with the Chinese government.
TikTok recently made headlines when groups of youth used the online application to organize and request multitudes of tickets to Trump’s Tulsa rally. The stunt made Trump’s team grossly overinflate the interest of attendance to the event. The timing of the ban brings into question if the reasoning was for national security or payback for the Tulsa rally.
Microsoft had expressed interest in purchasing the company but has delayed talks due to Trump’s announcement. TikTok currently employs over 1,000 people in the United States. The status of their jobs is currently unknown.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) tweeted “Banning an app like TikTok, Which millions of Americans use to communicate with each other, is a danger to free expression and technologically impractical.”