United States President, Donald J Trump has today signed an executive order banning TikTok and WeChat from operating in the Western country of opportunity.
Following the ban of TikTok from India over cybersecurity-related claims, the US executive order notes User Information share as the key notion for considering an India-like move even with 175Million downloads from the US-alone.
For WeChat, which ranks as China’s finest Instant Messaging (IM) App popularly used all over Asia, the order states issues alternate to those for TikTok.
So, effective 20th September 2020, ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) and Wechat will not be available in the US since the Executive Order notes a 45-day grace period for the services to pack-up and transition from the US.
“TikTok, a video-sharing mobile application owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., has reportedly been downloaded over 175 million times in the United States and over one billion times globally. TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
reads part of the executive order
By the same token, the order points out the recent TikTok ban by the Indian Government as icing to the US ban.
“The Government of India recently banned the use of TikTok and other Chinese mobile applications throughout the country; in a statement, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asserted that they were “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India.”
Trend of US Bans on Chinese based brands
Huawei as the biggest brand that continues to face bans from the US, was the inaugural Tech company to kiss the states goodbye. Now, TikTok and WeChat have followed suit with the same “CyberSecurity” in-sight.
Previously, Huawei replied to US claims on Cybersecurity taming them as false, and in a similar drive, TikTok greeted its exit door from Beijing over new that could be affiliated to its status on Cyber Security.
Hence, by banning 3 gigantic brands ruling 5G/Networks and New age Social Media sectors where US companies actively participate as fierce competitors. The continuous bans indicate that the US is trying to favor its own brands to lead the Tech industry and short Chinese based brands.
What’s next
In the essence of continuous bans, the US-style has so far not worked on slowing the domination streak of Chinese based brands. As a key example, Huawei’s current top Smartphone manufacturer status beating Apple to 3rd place without Google services is a clear bear of the US flaws.
In a bid to clear the air, TikTok and WeChat have not published statements about the new US Ban which take effect on September 20th. But by the look of things, these 2 brands may utilize the end of ties with the US into boosting their worldwide domination in a fashion similar to that of Huawei.