US President Donald Trump Says He Will Ban Chinese-Owned Video App TikTok
President Donald Trump said he will bar social media app TikTok from the United States as American authorities have raised concerns the service could be a tool for Chinese intelligence.
After India banned the Chinese-owned Tik Tok and other China-centric apps, since then in the United States, the app has been on the radar of officials.
President Donald Trump said that his administration is ready to take action against TikTok which is a popular Chinese owned video app that has been a source of national-security and censorship concerns.
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Trump¡¯s comments came after published reports that the administration is planning to order China¡¯s ByteDance to see TikTok. There were reports on Friday that the software giant Microsoft is in talks to buy the app.
Trump told reporters at the White House "We are looking at TikTok, We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options, but a lot of things are happening. So we'll see what happens."
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As reported by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News quoting sources, said that the administration could be soon announcing a decision ordering ByteDance to divest its ownership in TikTok.
There have been a lot of reports of US tech giants and financial firms which are interested in buying or investing in TikTok as the Trump administration sets its sights on the app.
The New York Times and Fox Business reported that Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok. Microsoft declined to comment.
However, TikTok issued a statement saying that, ¡°While we do not comment on rumours or speculation, we are confident in the long term success of TikTok.¡±
ByteDance company launched TikTok in 2017, that bought Musical.ly, which was also a video service popular among youth in the US and Europe and later combined the two.
TikTok still maintains that it doesn¡¯t censor videos based on topics sensitive to China and it would not give the Chinese government access to the US user data even if asked. The company has also hired a US CEO, a former top Disney executive in order to make sure that it looks distant from its Chinese ownership.
US Security officials have taken Musical.ly under review in recent times, on the other hand US armed forces have banned their employees from installing TikTok on government issued phones. Secretary of the state Mike Pompero had said that the US was considering banning TikTok.
