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Remember when former President Trump threatened to ban TikTok over security concerns? Sure, nothing came out of it, but the threat was real. Trump gave TikTok’s parent company an ultimatum, either sell to a US-based company or run the risk of the app being banned in the United States.
None of this ever happened. Oracle and Walmart stepped in to buy a portion of TikTok from parent company, ByteDance, but the whole thing just kind of fizzled away. It seemed like the Trump administration forgot about the entire thing.
Now, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, talks of this whole mess is officially dead, because honestly, the President has bigger fish to fry.
Security concerns around Chinese apps and other software that operate in the U.S are something that’s not flying under the radar, however.
We plan to develop a comprehensive approach to securing U.S. data that addresses the full range of threats we face,” National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said. “This includes the risk posed by Chinese apps and other software that operate in the U.S. In the coming months, we expect to review specific cases in light of a comprehensive understanding of the risks we face.
As Josiah mentioned in one of his earlier posts, “[I]f the Trump administration was really looking to ban the app for ‘national security concerns’ and not for all the people that trolled his Tulsa rally, then why, now, is it not a priority all of a sudden? The answer is quite simple – it was never about national security and all about personal ego.”
So there you have it, TikTok’s sale to Oracle and Walmart is kaput. I’m hoping this is the last time we’ll ever have to read about these companies all in the same sentence.
UPDATE 2/11/2021 07:30 AM ET: According to Bloomberg, the Biden administration asked a federal judge in Washington to halt litigation over a ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok, which was brought by former president Donald Trump.
The government “plans to conduct an evaluation of the underlying record justifying those prohibitions,” the administration said in a court filing on Wednesday. “A review of the prohibitions at issue here may narrow the issues presented or eliminate the need for this court’s review entirely.”
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Editors’ Recommendations:
- Instagram is about to steal TikTok’s vibe with a vertical feed for Stories
- TikTok will now give you a heads up if you land on a video it thinks contains misinformation
- Italy blocked TikTok after a 10-year-old girl died doing a “blackout challenge”
- TikTok users under the age of 16 will now have their accounts set to private by default
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