Donald Trump follows India, to dam TikTok and WeChat within the US on Sunday
Commerce officials said the ban on new U.S. downloads of TikTok might be still rescinded by President Donald Trump before it takes effect late Sunday as TikTok owner ByteDance races to clinch an agreement over the fate of its U.S. operations.
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The U.S. Department of Commerce said it’ll issue an order Friday which will bar people within the us from downloading Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat and video-sharing app TikTok starting on September 20.
Commerce officials said the ban on new U.S. downloads of TikTok might be still rescinded by President Donald Trump before it takes effect late Sunday as TikTok owner ByteDance races to clinch an agreement over the fate of its U.S. operations.
ByteDance has been talks with Oracle Corp et al. to make a replacement company, TikTok Global, that aims to deal with U.S. concerns about the safety of its users’ data. ByteDance still needs Trump’s approval to debar a U.S. ban.
Commerce officials said they’re going to not bar additional technical transactions for TikTok until Nov. 12, which provides the corporate overtime to ascertain if ByteDance can reach a deal for its U.S. operations. “The basic TikTok will stay intact until Nov. 12,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business Network.
The department said the actions will “protect users within the U.S. by eliminating access to those applications and significantly reducing their functionality.”
Oracle shares fell 1.6% after the news in pre-market trading
The Department of Commerce order will “deplatform” the 2 apps within the us and bar Apple Inc’s app store, Alphabet Inc’s Google Play et al. from offering the apps on any platform “that are often reached from within the us ,” a senior Commerce official told Reuters.
The order won’t ban U.S. companies from doing businesses on WeChat outside the us , which can be welcome news to U.S. firms like Walmart and Starbucks that use WeChat’s embedded ‘mini-app’ programs to facilitate transactions and have interaction consumers in China, officials said.
The order won’t bar transactions with WeChat-owner Tencent Holdings’ other businesses, including its online gaming operations, and can not prohibit Apple, Google or others from offering TikTok or WeChat apps anywhere outside the us .
The bans are in response to a pair of executive orders issued by Trump on Transfiguration that gave the Department of Commerce 45 days to work out what transactions to dam from the apps he deemed pose a national security threat. That deadline expires on Sunday.
Commerce Department officials said they were taking the extraordinary step due to the risks the apps’ data collection poses. China and therefore the companies have denied U.S. user data is collected for spying.
Ross said during a written statement “we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of yank citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of U.S. laws and regulations.”
The order is about to be published at 8:45 a.m. EDT (1245 GMT) on Friday, Commerce said.
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The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from U.S. digital networks and has called TikTok and WeChat “significant threats.”
TikTok has 100 million users within the us and is particularly popular among younger Americans.
WeChat has had a mean of 19 million daily active users within the us , analytics firms Apptopia said in early August. it’s popular among Chinese students, ex-pats and a few Americans who have personal or business relationships in China.
WeChat is an all-in-one mobile app that mixes services almost like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Venmo. The app is an important a part of lifestyle for several in China and boasts quite 1 billion users.
The Department of Commerce won’t seek to compel people within the us to get rid of the apps or stop using them but won’t allow updates or new downloads. “We are aiming at a top corporate level. We’re not getting to leave after the individual users,” one Commerce official said.
Over time, officials said, the shortage of updates will degrade the apps usability.
“The expectation is that folks will find other ways to try to to these actions,” a senior official said. “We expect the market to act and there’ll be safer apps which will fill in these gaps that Americans can trust which the us government won’t need to take similar actions against.”
Commerce is additionally barring additional technical transactions with WeChat starting Sunday which will significantly reduce the usability and functionality of the app within the us .
The order bars data hosting within the us for WeChat, content delivery services and networks which will increase functionality and internet transit or peering services.
“What immediately goes to happen is users are getting to experience a lag or lack of functionality,” a senior Commerce official said of WeChat users. “It should be usable but it’s not getting to be as functional because it was.” There could also be sporadic outages also , the official said.
Commerce will bar an equivalent set of technical transactions for TikTok, but which will not become until Nov. 12 to offer the corporate overtime to ascertain if ByteDance can reach a deal for its U.S. operations. The official said TikTok U.S. users wouldn’t see “a major difference” within the app’s performance until Nov. 12.
Commerce won’t penalize people that use TikTok or WeChat within the us .
The order doesn’t bar data storage within the us for WeChat or TikTok.
Some Americans may find workarounds. there’s nothing that might bar an American from traveling to a far off country and downloading either app, or potentially employing a virtual private network and a desktop client, officials conceded.
