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Post by Admin on Aug 1, 2020 19:16:22 GMT
President Donald Trump said he will take action as soon as Saturday to ban TikTok, a popular Chinese-owned video app that has been a source of national security and censorship concerns.
Mr Trump's comments came after published reports that the administration is planning to order China's ByteDance to sell TikTok. There were also reports on Friday that software giant Microsoft is in talks to buy the app.
On Friday, as he was leaving the White House to go to Florida, Mr Trump told reporters, "We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things.”
Later, on his return from Florida on Air Force One, Mr Trump told reporters, "As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States”.
The example of Japan’s cultural soft power is worth keeping in mind today, as TikTok, owned by the Chinese firm Bytedance, has found itself in the center of a wider conflict between the United States and China. Amid wide-ranging tensions involving military competition in the South China Sea, human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, trade and intellectual property disputes, and the handling of the coronavirus, the video-sharing app better known for launching viral dance crazes has taken on a surprisingly prominent role. The brewing dispute over the app went nuclear on Friday, when President Trump suggested he would use an executive order to ban the app within the United States. Bytedance is now reportedly planning to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok entirely.
The situation has been building to this for some time, with American policymakers raising concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to collect data on its American users. The House voted in July to bar TikTok from government-issued devices used by federal employees. Some American companies, like Wells Fargo, have also banned the app from corporate devices. ByteDance is also currently the target of a national security investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.
India already banned TikTok in June amid a border dispute with China. And Pakistan is considering doing the same, citing “immoral, obscene, and vulgar content.” It’s not exactly clear whether Trump actually has the legal means to ban TikTok, but at the very least, he can damage its global brand and help make it toxic to investors.
Trump’s threat comes amid reports that Microsoft is in talks to by TikTok from ByteDace. TikTok has been working for some time now to de-emphasize its Chinese origins with steps like bringing in American CEO Kevin Mayer from Disney, and withdrawing from Hong Kong in order to avoid complying with government data requests under a new Beijing-backed national security law. Faced with intimations that it might misuse personal data, the company has stressed repeatedly that it stores Americans’ information in the United States and Singapore, not China. But this has done little to assuage critics in Washington, including both Republicans and Democrats.
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2020 0:39:25 GMT
Could it have happened differently? Is there a world in which, rather than the association with China being a liability for TikTok, the association with TikTok is a soft power win for China?
Chinese-made products have been a ubiquitous part of American life for decades now, but TikTok is different. It’s not only the most successful Chinese consumer software product, it’s arguably China’s most successful cultural export.
China may be an economic and military superpower, but that hasn’t translated into cultural influence. There’s no mainland Chinese equivalent of global pop culture behemoths like India’s Bollywood, South Korea’s K-Pop, or Mexico’s telenovelas—all of which have risen, along with Japan’s exports, to challenge American cultural hegemony in recent years.
While China’s economic rise and its emergence as a film market has undoubtedly transformed Hollywood’s production and marketing practices, China’s own film exports have been less successful. (It turns out American audiences aren’t that interested in watching Matt Damon in a Chinese nationalist parable featuring aliens.)
TikTok, on the other hand, truly is a cultural behemoth—the seventh most downloaded app of the decade and increasingly where new trends in pop music, fashion, and comedy emerge into the zeitgeist. So why isn’t the fact that millions of young people around the world are glued to a Chinese app more of a benefit for China?
For one thing, unlike, say, Nintendo, there’s nothing particularly Chinese about the content on TikTok. Before the latest controversy, many of its users may not have even realized they were using a Chinese product. Aynne Kokas, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia who studies the global reach of Chinese media, says this is likely deliberate. While Chinese blockbuster films like Wandering Earth and Wolf Warrior tend to be too nationalistic for global tastes, “TikTok has been successful because what people are excited about is the platform, rather than the content itself,” she says.
But there is precedent for a piece of media technology, as opposed to content, serving as a form of cultural influence: the Sony Walkman, introduced in 1979. Even though its early American users were more likely listening to Madonna or Mozart than Japanese music, “because the WalkMan was such a breakout device that was so different than what came before, people started to associate that kind of high-tech lifestyle with Japan,” says Alt.
On the other hand, users only listen to a WalkMan. TikTok also listens to you—collecting information including users’ “location data, IP address, device type, browsing and search histories, and content shared with others on the platform.” It’s far from the only app that collects this data, but in theory, TikTok is obligated to turn over user data to the Chinese government—a worrying prospect given the Chinese government’s aggressive surveillance practices, both at home and abroad. While ByteDance maintains that there’s a firewall between its global and Chinese divisions and that user data is safe, Kokas notes that “anyone who’s ever studied a corporation knows that there are a lot of potential areas for overlap.” TikTok’s efforts now to assure governments and users that their data is safe feel too little too late.
Unfortunately for TikTok, the current moment isn’t just a trade war. China is also a military rival, as well as an authoritarian country building a deeply alarming high-tech surveillance state and carrying out the mass imprisonment of ethnic minorities. These are conflicts that won’t be bridged by a video sharing app, no matter how addictive.
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Post by Admin on Aug 4, 2020 0:30:05 GMT
On Friday night, President Donald Trump announced he would ban the short-form video app, whose parent company, ByteDance, is based in China.
“As far as TikTok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump said aboard Air Force One.
The popular app that has 100 million users in the U.S. has proved especially vital to many during the coronavirus pandemic as a source of entertainment, community and education, a half-dozen users told NBC News in interviews Saturday.
They said TikTok has helped them both unplug from the harsh realities of the world and plug into communities that make them feel connected.
Some said that if Trump does ban the app, it could motivate many young TikTokers to vote against the president in the November election.
“If it hasn’t already, I think this will definitely be a game-changer in young voters going out and voting for sure,” Kaylyn Elkins, 18, of Washington state, said.
TikTok has recently been scrutinized in the United States because of its China-based owner. Chinese law can compel any domestic company to hand over data it has collected on users.
Like scores of other apps, TikTok tracks phone locations and users’ metadata, and China has demonstrated an appetite for Americans’ personal data.
TikTok has repeatedly said that it is not influenced by China’s demands and that it is an independent company. Still, Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recently indicated that China views TikTok as a domestic company.
But many TikTokers have said they’re unbothered by the app’s connection to China and feel that if it was owned by a company based elsewhere, Trump wouldn’t be taking this kind of action.
“I think it’s just ridiculous considering what’s going on in the world and our country alone,” Elkins said. “I think if it was owned by a European country he wouldn’t even consider this idea.”
Trump’s announcement sent ripples through the TikTok community, with major influencers on the platform logging on to urge their followers to find them on other social media, like the streaming platform Twitch or the Facebook-owned Instagram.
“I’ve never seen that many people talking about one thing on the app for so long. I feel like the app has so many avenues, like there’s so many different things you could do on TikTok, the fact that everybody was focused on it being taken away was really interesting to me,” said Clara McCourt, 18, of New Jersey.
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Post by Admin on Sept 17, 2020 7:48:08 GMT
President Donald Trump is preparing to decide whether to approve Oracle Corp.’s alliance with the Chinese-owned video app TikTok after security experts examined the companies’ proposal.
A U.S. national security panel reviewed the bid Tuesday afternoon, but didn’t make a recommendation that the president approve or reject the deal, according to a person familiar with the matter. Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump said his staff are “very close to a deal” and signaled what could be telling support for Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chairman.
“I have a high respect for Larry Ellison,” he said. “He’s somebody I know, he’s been really a terrific guy for a long time.”
The proposal, unveiled in part, doesn’t call for Oracle to buy the business outright. Instead, the company would invest in a newly restructured global TikTok, with operations based in the U.S., according to people familiar with the proposal. Bytedance would maintain majority ownership and at least three shareholders in TikTok’s Chinese parent company -- General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital and Coatue Management -- would take stakes in the new business, said the people, all of whom asked not to be identified because the terms aren’t finalized.
Oracle’s proposal lacks the payment to the U.S. government that the president has insisted be the condition of any deal, according to two people familiar with the plan. Yet the company will try to use the promise of creating 20,000 new jobs through the popular video app as a way to win his approval, they said.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has played a central role in brokering a deal that would shift the Chinese-owned video app’s U.S. operations over to an American company, leads the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius, and has promised to give Trump the panel’s recommendation this week.
White House adviser Jared Kushner voiced strong support for Oracle’s bid for TikTok during an interview with CNBC earlier Tuesday, even though the proposal could still fall short of President Donald Trump’s demands that any deal protect national security and include the payout to the U.S. government.
The U.S. is undertaking a two-track national security review of the TikTok proposal this week and any sale still requires sign-offs from both the U.S. and China. One is through Cfius, and a separate one is through the Commerce Department.
While details of the agreement between Oracle and China’s ByteDance Ltd. remain under wraps, Kushner expressed optimism that it would clear the administration’s key hurdles.
“Hopefully the application qualifies on the merits for what we’re trying to accomplish from a national security point of view,” Kushner said. “America’s interest in that is really national security -- we want to make sure that people’s data is protected.”
The deal unveiled Monday by Oracle seeks to address the national-security concerns that Trump raised last month when he ordered the sale of TikTok’s U.S. business. The administration says that Chinese ownership of the app poses a risk to American users’ data security and that Beijing could use the service to deliver disinformation and propaganda to the service’s 100 million active users in the U.S.
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Post by Admin on Sept 19, 2020 5:27:32 GMT
TikTok’s interim CEO, Vanessa Pappas, is asking Facebook and Instagram to “publicly join our challenge and support our litigation,” as TikTok faces a new executive order from the Trump administration that will block people from downloading the app beginning September 20th.
The new order was issued by the Department of Commerce on Friday morning, and it essentially states that people aren’t allowed to download TikTok or WeChat beginning on the 20th. TikTok will continue to work in the United States for people who already have the app installed, but future downloads are prohibited.
Pappas’ call to action came in the form of a reply to a tweet by Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, who said that a “US TikTok ban would be quite bad for Instagram, Facebook, and the internet more broadly.” Pappas added that it’s a moment “to put aside our competition and focus on core principles like freedom of expression and due process of law.” Pappas’ prompt comes at a time when rumors are swirling that Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom is in talks to replace recently departed TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer.
“WE WILL CONTINUE TO CHALLENGE THE UNJUST EXECUTIVE ORDER” The Trump administration called for a TikTok ban earlier this year due to data security concerns. The administration demanded that ByteDance sell its US operations to an American company by September 15th or TikTok would be banned entirely. Currently, the administration and ByteDance are reportedly working with Oracle to secure a deal. TikTok also filed a lawsuit against President Trump in August, arguing that Trump’s original order offers no evidence that TikTok is indeed a national security threat to the United States, among other things.
TikTok issued a statement following the Department of Commerce’s order, noting that the company has already “committed to unprecedented levels of additional transparency and accountability well beyond what other apps are willing to do.” The statement adds that TikTok is already planning to work with an American tech provider, which would “be responsible for maintaining and operating the TikTok network in the US, which would include all services and data serving US consumers.”
“We will continue to challenge the unjust executive order, which was enacted without due process and threatens to deprive the American people and small businesses across the US of a significant platform for both a voice and livelihoods.”
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