Trump led the charge to ban TikTok. Now he says he’ll save it
Al JazeeraTrump has pledged to ‘save’ popular Chinese-owned app despite signing an order to ban it during his first term. On the campaign trail, Trump, who signed an executive order seeking to ban the app during his first term, pledged to “save TikTok” but neither he nor his transition team have disclosed further details about what this might mean for ByteDance. “And yes, even if TikTok stops working for a while because TikTok’s owners won’t sell at a fire sale price, Trump could convince Congress to change the law to bring it back.” David Greene, the civil liberties director of the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Trump could also instruct the US Justice Department to drop or modify its defence in the lawsuit with ByteDance or instruct the US Department of Commerce not to enforce the law. Critics of the TikTok ban also say that rather than targeting a single social media company, the US needs laws protecting data privacy similar to those passed by the European Union. Despite the threat of a US ban, the sale of TikTok had seemed unlikely to many observers from the start because it would mean giving away access to the app’s secret – and some argue, addicting – algorithm.