NEW YORK: Throughout his first time period as US president, Donald Trump led the effort to ban TikTok, the massively well-liked video-sharing website he mentioned posed a menace to US nationwide safety. However on the eve of his return to the White House, the president-elect is being hailed as the app’s saviour.
After going darkish for customers this weekend, Trump mentioned on his social media website that he would concern an government order after he is sworn in for a second time period on Monday (Jan 20), delaying a TikTok ban “in order that we will make a deal to guard our nationwide safety”.
Hours later, the app returned, to the aid of its legions of devoted customers.
“Thanks on your endurance and help. On account of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is again within the US!” learn the announcement.
Trump’s authorized authority to unilaterally resolve to not implement the legislation, which handed with overwhelming bipartisan help in April and was upheld by the Supreme Court docket on Friday, is unclear. However the fast developments over the weekend served as a reminder of how dramatically debates over expertise, social media and nationwide safety have modified since Trump was final within the White Home.
Trump can now take credit score for reviving an app with 170 million customers that’s particularly well-liked with youthful People, a lot of whom spend hours a day on the platform to get information, generate income and discover leisure.
“That is a kind of issues the place the home politics has grow to be so the wrong way up and loopy that it turns on the market’s solely upside for Trump now,” mentioned Invoice Bishop, a China professional who has been intently following the back-and-forth.
If the bans finally ends up being enforced, he mentioned, Trump will say it was on outgoing President Joe Biden’s watch.
“And if it does come again then Trump is a savior. And he will probably be rewarded each by customers” in addition to the corporate, which he mentioned is now “beholden to Trump” and may have an incentive to verify content material on the platform is beneficial to him.
This is how TikTok, and Trump, got here to this juncture:
March 2012: ByteDance is based in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first hit product is Toutiao, a personalised information aggregator for Chinese language customers.
July 2014: Startup Musical.ly, later referred to as an eponymous app used to publish quick lipsyncing music movies, is based in China by entrepreneur Alex Zhu.
July 2015: Musical.ly hits the highest spot within the Apple App Retailer, following a design change that made the corporate’s emblem seen when customers shared their movies.
2016: ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese language customers. Its recognition evokes the corporate to spin off a model for international audiences referred to as TikTok.
November 2017: ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for US$1 billion. 9 months later, ByteDance merges it with TikTok. Powered by an algorithm that encourages binge-watching, customers start to share all kinds of video on the app, together with dance strikes, kitchen meals preparation and varied “challenges” to carry out, file and publish acts that vary from severe to satirical.
February 2019: Rapper Lil Nas X releases the country-trap tune Previous City Highway on TikTok, the place it goes viral and pushes the tune to a file 17 weeks within the #1 spot on the Billboard Scorching 100 chart. The phenomenon kicks off a wave of TikTok movies from musical artists who instantly see TikTok as a vital technique to attain followers. Individually, TikTok settles federal costs of violating US child-privacy legal guidelines and agrees to pay a US$5.7 million high quality.
