UPDATE – SEPT. 21, 2020 8AM:
Yesterday, US President Donald Trump had announced his approval of the deal between TikTok and Oracle, stating that he had given his blessing. More information can be found here.
UPDATE – SEPT. 18, 2020 9AM:
The U.S. Commerce Department announced their plan on issuing an order in which they will prevent people from downloading TikTok and WeChat, though this will have no effect on those who’ve already downloaded the app. More information can be found here.
In early August, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order addressing the ban of the popular mobile application, TikTok. The order signed was originally intended to go into effect within 45 days.
“I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that additional steps must be taken to deal with the national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology and services supply chain declared in Executive Order 13873 of May 15, 2019 (Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain),” Trump stated on the official executive order.
“Specifically, the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. At this time, action must be taken to address the threat posed by one mobile application, in particular, TikTok.”
Many tech companies around the US, most notably Microsoft, had bid to take over TikTok’s US operations. However, on September 14th, 2020, TikTok came to an agreement with the multinational tech corporation, Oracle.
Though that might sound like TikTok had been saved from its removal in the US, some sources have stated that this may not be the case.
“A deal where Oracle takes over hosting without source code and significant operational changes would not address any of the legitimate concerns about TikTok,” former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos said on Twitter. “And the White House accepting such a deal would demonstrate that this exercise was pure grift.”
TikTok has over two billion downloads worldwide, with the US downloads making up 175 million of that. It is currently unknown whether TikTok might actually be banned, but the recent deal with Oracle might spark a touch of hope for users in the U.S.
