FAST FACTS: Trump’s push for a TikTok ban

US President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign recently started running ads on Facebook that asked people whether the video-sharing social media app should be banned in the country, citing data privacy and national security concerns. 

The ads’ claims are backed-up by findings from research firm Mysk, which earlier this year shared that TikTok is snooping on iPhone users’ clipboards. 

Clipboards is an iPhone functionality that enables users to copy and paste text from one app to another. It can contain sensitive and private information in such instances when users copy their login credentials. 

TikTok said that the issue was triggered by an anti-spam feature that it’s now discontinuing. 

Possibility of a ban

While the app has been facing some scrutiny from the US government since last year, talks of a ban only started gaining momentum when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested the possibility in a recent Fox News interview.

He alleges that the Chinese Communist Party is using the app to spy on its citizens, echoing similar sentiments of other US politicians. 

TikTok is owned by Beijing-based tech firm ByteDance, but is actually not available in China. The country, instead, has a similar version of the app, called Douyin. 

The people behind the app maintain that it has never shared user data to the Chinese government, nor would it if asked. 

They wrote in a blog post last year that it stores all US user data within the US with a backup in Singapore. It added that none of its data centers are subject to Chinese law. 

President Trump, however, has different reasons as to why he wants to ban the app, including China’s role for the coronavirus outbreak. 

It’s not clear yet how likely a ban is, but if successful, the US joins India among the countries to outlaw the app, with more likely to follow suit. 

India in late June banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps following border tensions with China. 

It’s also unclear how such a ban can be enforced, with analysts saying that it could prove difficult for the government to outright block TikTok traffic and stop its citizens from downloading the app entirely. 

Some institutions aren’t waiting for a government mandate to impose a ban on TikTok.

The US Army and Navy, for example, have reportedly prohibited service members from downloading the app on government-issued phones. (READ: US Transportation Security Administration bans TikTok use among employees)

Huawei parallels

What seems more likely to happen is that TikTok will be included in the same entity list as Huawei, restricting its access to US tech, thereby forcing Google and Apple to boot the app off of its respective app stores.

Huawei faced similar restrictions, with its phones being denied access to Google software and services, which ultimately crippled its sales in international markets. 

The Trump administration also urged its allies to block the use of its networking equipment. 

The British government announced last week that it was banning the Chinese telecom giant from its 5G networks after reportedly being pressured by President Trump and his team. 

TikTok’s popularity

Calls for the ban of TikTok in the US come amid the app’s surging popularity among teens during the ongoing pandemic. 

The app, launched in 2017, lets users create 15-second videos backed by a short clip from a song. It’s home to various lip-syncing, dance, and comedy skit videos that are created, shared, and viewed by its growing community. 

According to marketing firm Sensor Tower, TikTok has been downloaded over 165 million times in the US alone. 

Fans of the app are not taking Trump’s threat lying down, with some flooding the President’s official campaign app with negative reviews, as reported by TIME. 

TikTok has provided people under stay-at-home orders a steady stream of entertainment, and it doesn’t appear they’re ready to quit using it just yet. – Rappler.com