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Trump Issues Executive Order to Ban TikTok Unless Sold to U.S. Company

Danielle from Leaf and Core
Reading Time: 6 minutes.

TikTok logoTikTok is a privacy travesty. Its parent company likely shares data with the Chinese government. The same government known for its concentration camps, facial recognition, constant tracking, and lack of free speech, religious freedom, and rights for LGBTQ people. TikTok denies allegations, but every Chinese company maintains a close relationship with the Chinese government. If they’re not willingly handing over the data, Chinese officials obtain it in other ways.

Usually in cases like this, the U.S. government would only ban the app for anyone working for the government. TikTok collects loads of data from videos that contain data like locations, object recognition, facial recognition, clipboard data, words used, and comments. However, if someone isn’t a government employee or related to one, the data isn’t a threat to U.S. security, more a threat to personal privacy and people who may want to travel to China (which you should not). Large amounts of data can help China in a variety of ways though. They could find trends in behavior, boost certain trends, and help influence U.S. citizens. From there, they could influence our elections.

Still, the danger presented to our country as a whole, especially during a pandemic when American’s can’t travel due to being the worst in the world at handling this virus, is minimal. Over time it could be a problem, but that’s more a reason to enforce transparency and track the company, perhaps ban it from government officials. Instead, Trump has issued an executive order, banning TikTok unless they agree to sell to a U.S. company within the next (now) 44 days.

Will other Chinese companies have to follow suit?

Trump’s Growing TikTok Frustrations

TikTok users helped kill a Trump rally in Tulsa. No, really. A viral protest spread on TikTok. It challenged viewers to reserve a space at Trump’s Tulsa rally, then simply don’t show up. The “tickets” were free. This caused the Trump campaign to anticipate far more attendees than they had. Only a fraction of the expected turnout turned up. The large arena looked empty, and the Trump campaign surely wasted time and money preparing for a large crowd.

The Trump campaign denied the protest had any effect on their plans, but the empty seats, large empty spillover areas, and empty booths say otherwise.

Retaliation or Security?

The U.S. government has been investigating TikTok since last year, but nothing new came out. There was the clipboard issue, but LinkedIn users saw the same problem, suggesting many companies could collect clipboard data. It wasn’t until this viral protest that Trump started paying attention to TikTok. Suddenly, he wanted to ban the service that ruined one of his rallies. The timing is hard to ignore. Trump went from not mentioning TikTok to mentioning it constantly. He’s been talking about banning it for weeks now and, yesterday, finally followed through.

Nothing More Damaging Than Videos


There’s another possibility here. Hilariously suggested by Vogue, it’s that Trump wants to take down TikTok because of comedian Sarah Cooper. Now, this seems silly on the surface, but it actually makes a lot of sense. I know, it’s absurd, stick with me for a moment. After all, this has been an absurd presidency.

If you’re not aware, Sarah Cooper’s most recent shtick has been acting out Trump recordings. She takes the audio from something stupid Trump says, and acts over it. It might not sound like much, but her facial expressions, the props she uses, the other “characters” in the shots, it’s all quite funny. And viral.

Thanks to Cooper’s videos, Trump’s ridiculous flubs, “senior moments,” confusion, false statements, and poor mental health condition have been put on blast. Suddenly moments that many people wouldn’t see unless they follow the news closely are all over TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other networks, and they spread like wildfire. It’s making people aware of the dangerous lack of cognitive function our president possesses. The Axios interview went viral, but it was memes about the interaction that helped it spread to a wider audience. Humor spreads faster than news. When the humor is about the news, like The Daily Show on Comedy Central, it exposes more people to factual information than the dry stories would otherwise.

More informed voters don’t vote Republican, and they certainly don’t support Trump. TikTok is dangerous because viral political videos of him bring attention to the fact that he’s actually not “cognitively there.”

Data Collection and Algorithmic Feeds: Actual Concerns?

There are potential actual concerns about TikTok. The service collects large amounts of data, and could provide a shocking amount of information to the Chinese government. It could allow the Chinese government to develop portfolios on U.S. citizens, especially those who are visiting their country or are politically active. The service has also hidden videos that are critical of the Chinese government. They banned a woman for bringing up China’s concentration camps and genocide of Uighurs, they’ve hidden videos about Hong Kong’s protests, America’s protests, and LGBTQ-related content. Each time, they have an excuse and attribute it to a bug or a mistake, but only once the issue becomes large enough that TikTok has to take a step back. Clearly, the service is trying to influence their users, as much as they’re collecting information on them.

Part of that comes down to TikTok’s unique feed. Most social network feeds are algorithmically sorted. You don’t see Tweets or Facebook posts in the order that they happened, you see them in order of Facebook or Twitter’s assumed ability of the post to generate interaction. They try to keep you on the site. But TikTok’s feed uses your previous interactions to suggest videos from people you don’t follow. This allows TikTok to insert whatever they want into your feed. They can do so to make light of certain politicians or political issues, hide videos that make China look bad, or influence public opinion. As it turns out, it appears as though TikTok has been doing this. But that would be a reason to change how TikTok operates or force transparency, not for an outright ban, and certainly not for a sale to a U.S. company. An American company could use this app design to push people towards certain political beliefs as well.

Tick Tock, TikTok

Trump’s order came in late yesterday. TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, now has 45 days to sell the company. Well, 44 days, as of this writing. TikTok will not be allowed to continue operating in the U.S. by mid-September if ByteDance still owns the company. That’s not a long amount of time to make a deal, though it seems like Microsoft was already preparing to buy the company. If no one has bought TikTok by mid-September, the app will be removed from app stores. The government could also ask Apple to revoke their developer certificate, disabling the app on iOS, though that measure’s unlikely. It is possible that the government could pressure any companies that deal with TikTok to drop them, which means U.S. users may not even be able to access the service after next month.

Tencent, WeChat, Reddit, Discord, Spotify, Riot Games, Epic Games (Fortnite), Blizzard, Ubisoft, and More

This article has largely been about TikTok. However, Trump issued another executive order against WeChat and other Chinese-backed apps. WeChat is owned by Tencent, and Trump’s executive order attacked Tencent, the parent company, not the app itself. Trump’s administration later clarified that this was not the purpose of the order, however, due to its lousy wording, Trump’s order was an attack on Tencent, not WeChat.

Here’s the problem. Tencent has ownership in many tech companies. They own Riot Games outright, makers of League of Legends (and infamous for their toxic working environment). They also have large stakes in Epic Games, who make the Unreal Engine, present in many if not most 3D games as well as the makers of Fortnite. They also have a share in Blizzard, Ubisodt, Supercell, Snapchat, Universal Music Group, Spotify, and more. Furthermore, they have deals with major U.S. film studios and the NBA. If Tencent goes, many of your games, apps, movies, and music goes as well.

We could talk at length of the evil that is Tencent and its grip on world markets. But the fact of the matter is that an outright ban of Tencent in 45 days would cripple many companies and industries. This wasn’t Trump’s intention, but, as usual, he didn’t think before he wrote an executive order.

Trump claims the order will only affect WeChat. But why? If the issue is data collection, why shouldn’t it also target Tencent’s other holdings? At least Riot Games, where Tencent is the sole owner. It’s almost as though what Trump really wants to stop is speech. He’s targeting a social networking app and a chat app. Clearly his problem isn’t the security implications, it’s platforms people primarily use to talk to each other.

Free Speech Ban?

Regardless of whether or not TikTok could be potentially dangerous, we have to consider the fact that it is a platform for speech. ByteDance and the Chinese government may have a say in what materials show up on the platform, but moderation is within a company’s constitutional rights in the U.S. The fact is, TikTok is a site for speech. Sure, a lot of it is just humor or memes, but there are political discussions on the platform. Most of them are critical of Trump, thanks the the younger user base of TikTok. The timing of this order suggests Trump is trying to silence people who are not only speaking out against him, but hurting his campaign significantly. It sets a dangerous precedent, one that we’ve already seen with Twitter and Facebook. If you point out Trump’s flaws, he will silence you.

TikTok and WeChat will have to become U.S. companies if courts don’t block Trump’s order. Microsoft has expressed interest in buying TikTok, and may do so. Otherwise, these companies could disappear from U.S. App Stores in just 44 days.

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