Trump administration will block TikTok downloads starting Sunday

As of this Sunday, September 20, the TikTok and WeChat applications, both owned by China, will not be able to be downloaded in the United States in a blockade that has been decided by the president, Donald Trump, and implemented by the Department of Commerce.

Mobile application distribution platforms (such as Apple or Google) will be prohibited from offering both applications in the United States, which means that downloading them will be impossible, the Secretary of Commerce said on Friday.

"Under the leadership of the president, we have taken significant action to combat China's malicious collection of personal information about Americans," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox News.

This does not mean that TikTok will stop working on Sunday: those who already have it on their cell phones will be able to continue using it for at least a few more weeks.

The Commerce Department explained that the services of lodging (

) and traffic in Internet (that the applications use to work) will not be prohibited until 12 of November, after the presidential election.

 [An 'army' on TikTok armed with short videos challenges Trump: "I wish he cared as much about the pandemic as about the apps"]

TikTok thus has a deadline for its owner company, ByteDance, to finalize its negotiation with Oracle, the US provider chosen as a technology partner, and which will give the application the security support in data handling required by the Trump government.

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The agreement between ByteDance and Oracle would turn TikTok into a global company based in the United States, with the Californian technology company responsible for the operations and safeguarding of user information, according to NBC News.

ByteDance denied that it was misusing its users' data, as Trump accuses.

“TikTok US user data is stored in the United States, with strict employee access controls.

TikTok's biggest investors come from the United States.

We are committed ”, they said at the time.

The company also stated that "we have hired nearly 1,000 people to our US team this year alone, and we are proud to hire another 10,000 employees in high-paying jobs across the country."

TikTok has about 500 million users in the world, of which 30 million active users are from the United States, including many personalities such as actors, athletes and musicians.

The situation with WeChat, on the other hand, is different, as it faces a complete lockdown as of Sunday.