Published , by Asif Khan
Published , by Asif Khan
President Trump told reporters while flying on Air Force One that he plans to ban TikTok. This is an escalation of tensions between the United States and China as consulates in both countries have been shuttered in the past week.
Josh Lederman from NBC News tweeted out this news while aboard Air Force One. NY Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted out that Trump, "plans to terminate the social media platform Tik-Tok in the US using presidential authority."
Bloomberg reports that the president told reporters on Friday night that “As far as TikTok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States,” and when pressed about when it would happen he added: “Soon, immediately. I mean essentially immediately. I will sign the document tomorrow.”
As news of this ban hit Twitter, Charlie Gasparino over at Fox Business broke a story that Microsoft may be interested in acquiring TikTok. ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, is interested in dumping the app before the Trump administration shuts it down. Any deal between a Chinese and US company would draw a ton of scrutiny from regulators, but buying TikTok sounds like a Microsoft thing to do.
It remains to be seen how much longer TikTokers will be able to post their dance and lip sync videos. Maybe this will be the Byte app's time to shine? Probably not. No one uses Byte.
Facebook will likely be a winner in all of this, as they reported extremely strong earnings results earlier this week and are poised to steal whatever features made TikTok the platform that was hip for the teens. Some of the biggest TikTokers are moving over to another app called Triller. Kids these days, am I right?
Keep it locked on Shacknews as this story is still developing. We will be sure to update this article whenever Trump tweets about this. His most recent tweet after this news has broken is about coronavirus cases being higher in the US because of testing. "It's Lamestream Media Gold!" said the president.