Donald Trump Joins TikTok, the App He Once Tried to Ban

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has joined TikTok, the popular video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance. This is surprising because, as president, he tried to ban the app.

Trump's TikTok account, @realdonaldtrump, started with a video on Saturday night showing him greeting fans at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event in Newark, New Jersey. By the next morning, the account had over 450,000 followers.

This move comes while ByteDance is fighting a U.S. law that requires it to sell TikTok by January next year or face a ban. The White House says it wants TikTok to no longer be owned by a Chinese company for national security reasons, but it doesn’t want to ban the app entirely.

TikTok insists it doesn’t share U.S. user data with the Chinese government and has taken big steps to protect user privacy.

Back in 2020, Trump tried to ban TikTok, saying it was a security risk, but the courts stopped him. In March, he repeated his concerns about TikTok but also said that banning it could hurt young users and only help Facebook, a company he has criticized a lot.

Interestingly, President Joe Biden's campaign team has been using TikTok since February, showing how important the app has become in politics today.

Also Read: TikTok Files Lawsuit Against US Over Potential Ban