The U.S. Commerce Division said Friday it will ban Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat from U.S. app stores on Sunday and will bar the apps from accessing essential internet solutions in the U.S. – a shift that could successfully wreck the operation of both Chinese providers for U.S. users.
TikTok won’t face the most drastic sanctions until after the Nov. 3 election, but WeChat users could feel the effects as early as Sunday.
The order, which cited national security and data privacy concerns, follows weeks of dealmaking over the video-sharing service TikTok. President Donald Trump has pressured the app’s Chinese owner to sell TikTok’s U.S. functions to a domestic business to satisfy U.S. worries over TikTok’s information collection and related issues.
California tech giant Oracle recently struck a deal with TikTok along those outlines, although details remain foggy and the management is still reviewing it. Trump stated Friday said he had been open to a deal, noting that “we have some great options and maybe we can keep a lot of people joyful,” suggesting that also Microsoft, which mentioned its TikTok bid had been rejected, might continue to be involved, along with Oracle and Walmart.
Trump noted that TikTok was “very, very popular,” that “we have to have the total security from China,” and that “we are able to do a combination of both.”
The new order puts pressure on TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, to make further concessions, said James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Trump got said this week that he does not like the idea of ByteDance keeping majority control of TikTok.
TikTok expressed “disappointment” on the move and said it would continue to challenge President Donald Trump’s “unjust executive order.” The Commerce Department is usually enacting an purchase announced by President Donald Trump in August. TikTok sued to stop that ban.
WeChat proprietor Tencent said in an emailed statement that it’ll continue steadily to discuss ways to address problems with the government and look for long-term solutions.
Google and Apple, the owners of the major mobile app shops, did not immediately reply to questions. Oracle also didn’t reply.
“At the President’s direction, we’ve taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while marketing our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of U.S. laws and regulations,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross stated in a prepared statement.
The action is the Trump administration’s newest attempt to counter the influence of China, a rising economic superpower. Since using office in 2017, Trump offers waged a business war with China, blocked mergers concerning Chinese companies and stifled the business of Chinese firms like Huawei, a maker of mobile phones and telecom products.
China-backed hackers, meanwhile, have been blamed for data breaches of U.S. federal databases and the credit agency Equifax, and the Chinese government strictly limits what U.S. tech businesses can do in China.
The order requires WeChat, which has millions of U.S. customers who rely on the app to stay in touch and conduct business with people and companies in China, to end payments through its services as of Sunday and prohibits it from getting technical services from vendors that could seriously influence its functions. The Justice Section mentioned in a filing that they would not target users with criminal or civil penalties for messaging on the app.
WeChat customers have sued to avoid the ban, and a federal judge in California on Friday place an emergency hearing for Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time.
Similar specialized limitations for TikTok don’t go into effect until Nov. 12, shortly after the U.S. election. Ross said early Fri on Fox Business Network that access to that app may be achievable if specific safeguards are put into place. TikTok says it has 100 million U.S. users and 700 million globally.
Nicholas Weaver, a computer science lecturer from UC Berkeley, said the actions taking impact Sunday are short-sighted and suggest that “the U.S. is not to end up being trusted and not a friendly place for business.” Users, meanwhile, encounter a safety “nightmare” because they won’t be able to get app improvements that fix bugs and protection vulnerabilities, he said.
The technical measures are “enforceable, the question is whether they are legal,” said the guts for Strategic and International Studies’ Lewis, likening them to a U.S. version of China’s “Great Firewall,” which censors its domestic internet. He stated there could be a First Amendment challenge.
Like most social networks, TikTok collects user data and moderates users’ posts. It grabs customers’ locations and text messages and tracks what they watch to figure out how best to target ads to them.
Similar concerns apply to U.S.-centered social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, but Chinese ownership adds an extra wrinkle because the Chinese government could demand cooperation from Chinese companies. The administration, however, has supplied no specific evidence that TikTok provides made U.S. users’ data available to the Chinese authorities. Some cybersecurity professionals question whether the administration’s attempts are more political than rooted in reputable concerns about Chinese threats to data security.
“If there are direct national safety threats, that information should be shared with the U.S. human population,” mentioned David Kennedy, CEO of cybersecurity firm TrustedSec, before the Commerce Department’s regulations were introduced. “We’re not talking about what needs to happen policy-sensible, we’re trying to hack this jointly to hurt China.”
TikTok claims it does not store U.S. user information in China and that it would not give consumer data to the federal government, and does not censor movies per dictates from China.
