Americans have long accused TikTok of having ties to Chinese authorities and are concerned that the social media platform may pass information on its users to Beijing. Now the US has drawn perhaps the heaviest weapon in the war against TikTok.
Reuters: The US issues an ultimatum and threatens to completely block TikTok
How the Joe Biden administration demanded that all Chinese shareholders divest their stake in ByteDance, which owns TikTok. The US authorities threatened that otherwise they would introduce a complete blockade of the application in their country.
For TikTok, it would be quite a painful blow, because 100 million people use the Chinese application on American soil. Moreover, the US can inspire or influence other countries to ban the Chinese app as well. First of all, it concerns the countries of the European Union and Great Britain.
. The United Kingdom announced on Thursday a ban on the use of TikTok on the phones of British officials. Since mid-2020, the application has been banned in India, where
As described by Reuters, issuing such an ultimatum is one of the most dramatic steps the United States has taken in the fight against TikTok. Americans have been debating ways to effectively block apps for some time. As the agency reminds, Donald Trump tried to ban the application for the first time in 2020, but then his actions were blocked by US courts.
It is not clear in what form the ultimatum was given to TikTok and how the Americans intend to block the use of TikTok. A spokeswoman for the platform only admitted to Reuters that she had heard such a threat from the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Chinese authorities responded by saying that the US has so far not provided any evidence that TikTok poses a threat to national security.
The owner of TikTok, ByteDance is a Chinese company founded in Beijing in 2012. 60 percent of the company belongs to international shareholders, 20 percent. shares are held by its employees, and another 20 percent. founders. ByteDance created TikTok in 2016, and in 2017 the platform absorbed the rival app musical.ly.
Source: Gazeta
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