Trump Says U.S. Will Ban TikTok

President Trump said that he will take action as soon as possible to ban TikTok, a popular Chinese video-sharing app, that has been a source of national security and censorship concerns. Trump's comments came after various reports that the administration is planning to order Bytedance, TikTok's parent company, to sell TikTok. The New York Times and Fox Business, citing an anonymous source, reported that Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok.

Global Times, China's state-owned news outlet, called Trump's comments "barbaric act of rogue US". "China has never banned US high-tech companies from doing business in the country. What the Chinese government demands is that what they do in China should comply with Chinese law. That's all.", says the news outlet. However, the fact is that China favors its own companies and violates free-trade pledges it made when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Many Gen-Z TikTok users took to Twitter and complained that Trump is trying to stifle freedom of speech. Some even called their followers to vote out Trump in the upcoming presidential election. However, they fail to understand the gravity of the situation. TikTok even went as far as censoring content that doesn't please the Communist Party of China. According to leaked internal documents, TikTok instructed its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong.