

However, TikTok has responded to international concerns by saying that it doesn’t even store data for U.S. It’s also undeniable that many large Chinese conglomerates do have close ties to the government, which worries some observers in the context of data privacy. WeChat, for its part, has been accused of supporting China’s domestic surveillance programs. TikTok has already come under scrutiny for the way that it handles user privacy, both in the United States and Europe. politicians argue that China’s own security laws could one day be used to compel them to hand over data on American users to Beijing. Both companies are based in China, and U.S.

government consider these two apps to be such a threat?Īccording to the Trump administration, the apps pose a risk to national security because of who their parent companies are: TikTok is owned by ByteDance, and WeChat is owned by Tencent. TikTok is a video-sharing social media app popular with younger users, and WeChat is a messenger app with a mobile payment feature that is widely used in mainland China. Why does the US want to ban TikTok and WeChat?

app marketplaces, and both apps receiving a last-minute (and temporary) stay of execution. It’s been a topsy-turvy week for popular apps TikTok and WeChat, with the United States threatening to make good on its promise to pull them from U.S.
