Trump has signed sanctions against TikTok and WeChat
The validity of the decree begins 45 days after it is signed. After “any transaction by any person” in respect of any property under United States jurisdiction that is related to WeChat, Tencent and TikTok, ByteDance will be prohibited.
The President of the United States justified his decision by the fact that the service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance may be used to collect personal data of the country’s citizens by Chinese intelligence.
Trump also said that TikTok is dangerous because it can spread misinformation.
In his decree, the U.S. president said he was “obliged to take additional steps to address the national information and telecommunication technology emergency”.
Similar measures have also been taken with regard to the social network WeChat, which is owned by Chinese technology company Tencent.
TikTok, however, has no plans to give up. Vanessa Pappas, General Manager of the company in the U.S., thanked the U.S. user community for their support and said the company intends to stay in the U.S. for a long time.
The social video network TikTok has about one billion users in 150 countries and in the U.S. there are about 80 million users. The audience of WeChat today is 936 million people.
