Courtesy of fortune.com
On August 6, 2020, President Donald Trump issued two executive orders to ban TikTok and WeChat, two big Chinese apps, from the United States for national data security concerns. Trump gave an ultimatum to ByteDance, the company who is behind TikTok, that they can either be bought by an american company, or ban comes into effect 45 days after the orders.
The first question on the table is if the President can effectively ban TikTok. According to brookings.edu, “the short answer is yes.” Trump’s administration has two major routes that it can “use to address national security concerns.” The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is a committee that reviews and blocks foreign entities of U.S. business. When ByteDance bought rights to musical.ly and rebranded the platform, the CFIUS had been reviewing the company since the latter months of last year. The Administration did not go with a CFIUS declaration, although the American company wanting to buy must have been approved through this, but rather the second avenue: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). This act allows for “presidents to respond to emergency national security concerns,” (Gertz). There is an added benefit to using the IEEPA as this act also can block any transactions with American consumers in the future.
Although many companies have been in line to buy ByteDance, Oracle has made the agreement to partner with TikTok just yesterday. The question now becomes, is it too late to decide TikTok’s fate? The time crunch of having to wrap all the change in ownership up in less than a week with the deadline being on September 20 will certainly be a close call.
Courtesy of CNN Business
The problem here is that for many, many influencers use this media platform as a source of income and people tend to get mad when their income starts to drop. Thousands in the U.S. use the app for entertainment that is tailored toward the user through the type of content they watch. The military has already made soldiers delete TikTok starting with the Navy back last December. Other than keeping each soldiers’ privacy information safe, I can see not having it gone as a security reason for geography and important rooms being leaked.
What do you think of the situation? Did President Trump want to ban TikTok only for the reason of security or more personal reasons such as TikTokers sabotaging Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma back in July? Do you think Oracle will be able to successfully grab the rights to TikTok despite the clock ticking?
Sources:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/08/07/why-is-the-trump-administration-banning-tiktok-and-wechat/
https://fortune.com/2020/09/08/trump-tiktok-ban-china-internet/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/14/tech/tiktok-deadlines/index.html
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