Donald Trump has sensationally declared that he will ban TikTok in the US and could sign an executive order.
The President announced the severance on board Air Force One as he returned from a trip to Florida, as there have been concerns about the video-sharing app’s ties to the Chinese government.
Donald Trump stated that as far as TikTok was concerned, they were banning them from the United States, and calling the action a severance, but he didn’t specify whether he would act through an executive order, or another method, such as a designation, and he does have that ability.
Donald Trump’s comments came as Microsoft reportedly held talks to buy the TikTok video-sharing mobile app from Chinese owner ByteDance, and Donald Trump told reporters that he strongly rejected the reported spinoff deal involving Microsoft buying TikTok.
The Chinese company ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, and the app has grown more prevalent throughout the coronavirus pandemic, with 2 billion downloads in April.
But the rise of TikTok in the US has urged the Trump Administration to scrutinise the app, and Microsoft refused to reflect on the talks but said that while they don’t comment on rumours or speculation, they’re confident in the long term prosperity of TikTok.
And earlier this month, the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US was looking at banning TikTok as well as other Chinese social media apps, citing national security concerns.
TikTok has been scrutinised in the same way as Chinese state-backed tech companies Huawei and ZTE, which Mike Pompeo previously described as Trojan horses for Chinese intelligence.
The US is suspicious of Chinese intellectual property theft which has cost the economy billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs and endangers national security but Beijing maintains it doesn’t engage in intellectual property theft.
The move by the Trump administration represents another step in the deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing and came a week after the US closed the Chinese consultation in Houston, prompting China to screen the US counterpart in Chengdu.
Donald Trump is acting like a complete and utter blooming fool. What’s he going to do, ban the ISP’s from carrying it on their platforms?
But kids aren’t as dumb as they look, and all they’ll do is run it through a VPN linked to Canada or wherever and that’s Donald Trump screwed – what’s he going to do then, lock up the end-user? That would be entertaining.
There are so many other platforms like TikTok, and Americans will just move onto another and still troll him.
But if you look you would actually discover, quite plainly, in the Terms and Conditions of the app that all user information is saved in their home country and not accessible elsewhere.
Meaning that US users info is saved to US servers and not accessible to the developers. All updates are sent to the various user countries for them to edit and upload if they want, and a lot of time they add their own spin on the original designs.
But it seems that Donald Trump wants to ban it because he’s still pouting that American influencers used the app to ruin one of his simple-minded demonstrations.
And if he does get his way and the app is banned in the US, watch a new surge of protests pop up because he’s going against the Constitutions Freedom of Speech, but then do we believe that China will honour it Terms and Conditions?
And don’t forget all Chinese companies are permitted to act on the direction of the Chinese Communist State, together with all that it implies.
And it now seems that he wants to ban anything that’s not American, including Democracy, presumably because it’s a Greek concept.
But when all said and done, we should all be sceptical of any technology that’s produced, it doesn’t matter who it is, but suddenly banning the use of something will always be a step in the wrong direction.
And in a democracy, which Donald Trump is determined to slaughter in the US, a person is permitted to support a complete authoritarian, narcissistic would-be dictator at their own free will. So, does that mean if we have no democracy the American’s don’t have to take any notice of him?
The point is, social platforms have been spying on us for years, so what’s the difference now? Aside from the fact that Donald Trump can use Facebook and Google to favour his own ends, and plus they’re American owned, so no one can challenge them.
And Donald Trump is the one that whines about censorship when it suits him and then condones it when it suits him – so the madness of Donald Trump escalates.
There have been many concerns over China spying on government agencies, and there’s been a lot of hypotheses, lots of talk, lots of rhetoric but precious little evidence, and if you believe it’s only the Chinese that is spying on other government agencies then we must all be on another planet.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 