July 26, 2021

TikTok a Year After Trump’s Ban: No Change, but New Threats

Source: Wired

Journalist: Will Knight

Saturday will mark a year since Donald Trump said he would ban the wildly popular and annoyingly addictive short-video app TikTok from millions of US smartphones, citing threats to users’ privacy and security posed by its Chinese ownership.

A week later, Trump signed an executive order directing the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either sell TikTok to an American business within 45 days or see it forcibly removed from app stores and blocked. The deadline was extended several times, and Oracle and Walmart emerged as the putative saviors for TikTok in a deal that was later shelved. At one point, Trump brazenly suggested any sale should include a cut for the US government itself.

Read the full story and more from Wired.

Author

  • Ainikki Riikonen

    Former Research Associate, Technology and National Security Program

    Ainikki Riikonen is a former Research Associate for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Her research focuses on emer...