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U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order barring transactions with TikTok's parent company ByteDance, starting in 45 days, according to a White House statement.
The executive order, issued late on Thursday, would prohibit "any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with ByteDance Ltd."
The order alleges that 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."
Itcame as the U.S.Senate on Thursday unanimously voted to approve a bill banning federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, amid threats from the White House to ban the company.
The White House said the order was issued to address the threat posed by Chinese firm ByteDance's TikTok video appand and the United States "must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security."
Trump, in a letter to U.S. congressional leaders, said he is also banning any transactions starting in 45 days with messenger app WeChat's owner Tencent.
TikTok has recentlycome under fire from U.S.lawmakers and the Trump administration over alleged national security concerns thatByteDance, a Chinese company, owns the technologyand the power to influence a large number of U.S. users.
Last week, China called on the United States to provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory market environment for entities of all countries including China, and to stop politicizing trade and economic issues.
Tiktok is a video-sharing social networking mobile app that launched in 2016. In the first half of 2018, it achieved almost 105 million downloads on Apple's App Store, which made it the most downloaded app for that period.
TikTok's combination of short 15-second videos, which provides bursts of entertainment including lip syncing, dancing, comedy skits and other physical activities, has made it a hit among those born between 1995 and 2015, or otherwise known as Gen Z.
Washington's TikTok ban has sparked outrage among the app's more than 70 million monthly active users in the United States. A hashtag #savetiktok2020 was seen trending, and videos with the hashtag #ban had more than 620 million views by Sunday night on TikTok, Xinhua reported.
"The fate of the platform remains uncertain, but one thing is clear: Banning it would upturn fundamental principles of democracy," wrote Nicholas Thompson, editor in chief of Wired, in an article titled "The Rank Hypocrisy of a TikTok Ban."
"It's a rare feat to upturn two such fundamental democratic values – free speech and free markets – at the same time," Thompson said.
(CGTN)
