President Donald Trump has announced that he will carry out the necessary measures so that the very popular app and social network TikTok cannot continue operating in the United States, something that has obviously caused enormous discontent both to users and to the ByteDance company, the firm that owns and develops this application.
The luck with which this platform will run will not, apparently, be very different from that with which Huawei currently has, a company that, like ByteDance, the developer and owner of TikTok, is Chinese. This is justified a possible mishandling of the information provided by the users of the app, something that was alerted by the intelligence of the American government last year.
The future of TikTok is in jeopardy
The power and influence that the United States has over other countries globally is well known. The fact that Trump prohibits the use of the app means that other nations will further evaluate TikTok's behavior, since in the past this video platform has also been singled out for alleged mishandling of its users' information, including the smallest of the house, something for which the use of it in the UK and elsewhere was previously controversial.
#TikTok US General Manager Vanessa Pappas reacts to possible shutdown in the country by Donald Trump:
"We're not planning on going anywhere."
- Pop Crave (@PopCrave) August 1
Although Donald Trump's announcement does not guarantee 100% the realization of the TikTok veto in the United States, it is really very unlikely that it will not be carried out. Again we have the example of Huawei's predicament to be practically certain that sooner or later the social network, which is currently the seventh largest in the world, with more than 800 million active users per month, will not be able to be used in said territory, which has one of the most extensive user communities of the application.
The Republican president announced that he could resort to emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, which suggests that there is already more than one plan and strategy ready to be executed as soon as possible. However, despite the power and authority that Trump has, Vanessa Pappas, the General Manager of TikTok in the United States, noted that they "do not plan to go anywhere"A fairly consistent statement that seems to challenge the American president.
In addition, he did not skimp on saying, through a video posted on his Twitter account, that “TikTok is the home of creators and artists to express their ideas and connect with people of different origins. We are proud of everyone who calls TikTok home » [In the past: TikTok returns to India after its ban is lifted]
Pappas assured that The platform has created some 1.500 jobs in the country and that in the next 3 years some 10.000 more jobs will be created, in order to contribute to the growth of the country, its citizens and the development of TikTok as such.
In the past, TikTok has released statements in which it states that it protects the information of its users, at the same time in which it ensures that does not share any data with the Chinese government, something that has been tried before and haunts the company as a shadow.
To shake off these claims, one of the steps TikTok took was to hire an American CEO, a former top Disney executive, in order to distance himself from his Chinese ownership and the origin of the company. However, this and other actions have not prevented, for example, the United States from prohibiting members of its navy from using the application, for fear of the leak of vital data from them and the defense agency as such. [It may interest you: TikTok exceeds 1.000 billion downloads pushed by coronavirus]
If the TikTok ban in the United States arrives, something that we already anticipate with almost total security, it should not affect the regular operation of the app in other territories. Even so, some people are already doubting whether using this platform as a social network is safe or not, and surely more than one country is planning to follow the steps more closely to the internal work of the app, in order to verify that its use It is safe and does not entail any type of risk for its inhabitants or national security.
