As President, Trump threatened to ban TikTok. However, he appears to have changed his mind. Meanwhile, a US House committee has voted to advance a bipartisan bill that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest the app within 165 days.
Members of Congress were inundated with calls from angry constituents after TikTok notified users of the threat of a ban in the United States, while President Joe Biden said “I will sign” the bill if it passes. The controversial bill, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign-Controlled Apps Act, was introduced earlier this week.
TikTok responded that the US government was “attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free speech. This would hurt millions of businesses, deny artists access to their audiences, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”
Mr Trump has a different take on Mr Biden – his rival in the US presidential race this year. “If you take TikTok out, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” he posted on the social network Truth Social. He added that he did not want Facebook to “do better”, accusing Mark Zuckerberg’s company of cheating in the previous election and calling the platform “the real enemy of the people”.
During his presidency, in 2020, Mr. Trump wanted to ban TikTok if the company could not find an American buyer. After that effort failed, he clashed with the owner of another social network: Facebook.
Mr. Trump has clashed with Mr. Zuckerberg on several occasions. For example, he called the Facebook CEO a “criminal” and accused him of trying to sway the 2020 election through his donations. In 2022, Mr. Trump referred to Mr. Zuckerberg as a “wacky guy.” Mr. Zuckerberg also criticized the former US president for some inflammatory posts on Facebook.
Mr. Trump was indefinitely banned from Meta’s platforms for his posts about the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021. Meta lifted the ban about two years later. Mr. Trump moved to Truth Social after being banned from both Facebook and Twitter.
Another celebrity who agrees with Trump’s latest TikTok claim is billionaire Elon Musk. The two recently met in Florida. “Trump’s statement is accurate,” he wrote on X.
Musk himself is no fan of Zuckerberg. The two have been feuding since 2016, when a SpaceX rocket launch accident damaged a Facebook satellite. In 2018, when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Musk deleted his SpaceX and Tesla Facebook accounts. He made the hashtag #deletefacebook public.
Since then, tensions have been rising, with Musk even challenging Zuckerberg to a cage fight. However, when Zuckerberg agreed and asked for a specific time and place, Musk abandoned the idea.
(According to Axios, Insider)
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