On January 19, the US Supreme Court is to consider the case of the alienation of the American business of TikTok for the purpose of ensuring national security, and if the management of the Chinese ByteDance does not agree to the conditions of the American side, the work of the social network in the country may be terminated. Donald Trump has shown sufficient favor in this matter.
Image source: Unsplash, Solen Feyissa
Speaking to like-minded people in Arizona last Sunday, the US president-elect admitted that during the election campaign, it was on TikTok pages that views of his content increased noticeably: “I think we need to start thinking about this, since we went to TikTok, and the audience showed good response in the form of billions of views and billions and billions of views.” The future President of the United States noted that when he saw the schedule of views of his speeches on the TikTok pages, he said to himself: “Maybe I should leave it for a while.”
Donald Trump met with the head of TikTok a week ago, after which he publicly stated that he was warm to the social network thanks to the support from the audience that he received during the election campaign. TikTok denies any ties to Chinese government agencies, but American authorities in April issued a law requiring parent company ByteDance to either separate its American business by January 19 or face a TikTok ban in the United States. Donald Trump will begin working as President of the United States only on January 20, and it is still difficult to imagine how he can influence the outcome of the trial in the current conditions. TikTok stores and processes data from American users in the Oracle cloud infrastructure; it also makes content moderation decisions for local users in the United States, but these measures are not enough for American officials.