[ad_1]
Trump has issued a final ultimatum: TikTok and WeChat apps will soon be banned in the US That hits millions of Chinese hard, because they lack a crucial means of communication in their homeland.
By Katrin Brand, ARD Studio Washington
Starting Monday, it will no longer be possible to download the two apps TikTok and WeChat in the US. Those who have already installed it will no longer receive updates, according to the US Department of Commerce. The WeChat news platform will also only be you can use it in a very limited way.
This does not apply to TikTok, said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on FoxBusiness. The basic settings of the Tiktok app will remain intact until November 12, according to Ross. Then this application could not be used either. This could affect about 100 million users in the US.
Ultimatum of US President Trump
However, it doesn’t have to come to that. President Trump had given TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance an ultimatum until Sunday to sell the app to US companies. Now that Microsoft is no longer in the race, intensive negotiations are apparently underway with Oracle and Walmart right now. If a deal is reached, which President Trump approves, the bans could also be lifted again.
This week, however, the president was still very skeptical. No, he is not ready to sign anything yet, he said at a press conference. “We want security, especially with regard to what is happening in China,” the US president said.
Trump also renewed his idea this week that if TikTok goes on sale, a substantial sum should be diverted to the Treasury. After all, he argues, the sale was only made by the United States government.
Commerce Department: an “unacceptable security risk”
The US government has been monitoring the two apps for months. In his opinion, TikTok and WeChat collect large amounts of data from their users, including locations, search history, and online activities. Because the owners are required to work with the Communist Party of China, they pose an unacceptable risk to the security, foreign policy and economy of the United States, according to the Commerce Department. ByteDance, however, denies the transmission of data.
The de facto ban on the WeChat platform particularly affects the roughly six million Chinese living in the US For them, WeChat is an important link to family in China. Other services such as Facebook, WhatsApp or Telegram are blocked by the Communist Party. WeChat had an average of 19 million users per day in recent months. The platform is also used to transfer money. This feature is also restricted in the US.
