26 Oct THE BRIEF HISTORY OF TRUMP’S FIGHT AGAINST TIKTOK
2020 has been a rough year globally, but especially for the US with the COVID-19, racism and President Trump.
What’s going on between Trump and TikTok?
In August, President Trump said he might ban the video app. This unexpected announcement started various debates and reactions among its users, influencers and media agencies etc. Some influencers shared their goodbye videos and requested their followers’ support during this process, some started to archive their posts on TikTok to possibly use on other platforms.
Sure, TikTok is a social media app where people dance, do comedy skits and have fun. But it has also become a livelihood for a vast amount of people such as Charli D’Amelio, who currently has the most followers on the app with 94.2 million followers. Her net worth in 2020 is estimated to be at least $5 million, and yes, we can imagine the look you are giving right now! In addition to the people earning their lives on the app, TikTok has become an information and organization platform for Gen Z, especially with election nears. Therefore, needless to say, President Trump has received a great deal of backlash with his announcement. While Instagram took the advantage of the opportunity and launched a new feature, called Reels, designed to compete with TikTok and attract creators. Some people love it, some people hate it, while TikTok has some things to say about it.
President Trump is not alone in this adventure, some administrative officials also agree with him, having concerns regarding the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance. Since the parent company is Chinese, the Trump government has concerns regarding the possible data share of the company with Beijing. They think that Chinese-owned companies pose a threat to national security as the Chinese government has the ability to access the data under local laws. TikTok released a statement, saying all US data is in the US, with a backup in Singapore and none of its data is subject to Chinese law.
Unfortunately, the statement didn’t satisfy the Trump administration and they continued their claims regarding data share.
If you are nerdy and want to know the background and reality of these concerns; you can check Elliot Anderson’s TikTok analysis.
What the US can do to restrict the app?
The Trump administration has some alternatives to restrict the app. It could block some foreign products from American app stores under its law; it could put TikTok’s owner on a list, which prohibits American firms from selling goods to it without a licence, or it could also order the Chinese company to spin off TikTok as it emerged out of Musical.ly. The company could also agree to sell TikTok voluntarily to avoid being ordered to do so.
There are already some discussions and speculations surrounding the latter option. Yet, it is also said that Beijing prefers to see the video app shutter its US operations because a forced sale could make China look weak, according to Reuters. In August, the Trump administration issued an order that sets a deadline (November 12) for a sale of TikTok. On September 19, Walmart and Oracle published statements to hopefully give clarification to all the speculations.
Oracle and Walmart would a combined %20 stake in a new company called TikTok Global, which is expected to go public in the next year. The newly created company will have four American board members including Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart. With this deal, Oracle becomes TikTok’s cloud service provider.
TikTok Global also plans to create 25,000 jobs in the US and it will pay more than $5 billion in new tax dollars to the US. It will also create “an educational initiative to develop and deliver an AI-driven online video curriculum to teach children from inner cities to the suburbs, a variety of courses from basic reading and math to science, history and computer engineering.”
But what is the role of ByteDance in this new company? Will it have shares at all? Ken Glueck, Oracle executive vice president, said in a statement that “TikTok Global shares will be distributed to their owners, Americans will be majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global.”
We don’t know the end of this saga for sure, and probably nobody does! But it seems like TikTok Global will be a solution to all concerns if of course, China doesn’t prevent such a development.
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