The White House opened an official account on the TikTok social network called @whitehouse. About this informs Reuters.
The first clip featured footage of Donald Trump with his words: “I am your voice”, and the caption to the video sounded like this:
“America, we’re BACK! Hello TikTok?”
White House spokeswoman Caroline Levitt said the administration is committed to bringing the president’s “historic achievements” to as wide an audience as possible. She emphasized that Trump already had an advantage on TikTok during the election campaign, and now the team intends to increase that presence.
At the same time, concerns remain in the US over the control of the Chinese company ByteDance over TikTok. The law, passed in 2024, required the app to be halted in the US if it was not sold to US investors by January 19. However, after the start of the second presidential term, Trump postponed the implementation of this decision several times – currently the deadline is set for September 17. This decision drew criticism from some American lawmakers, who believe that the administration is ignoring national security issues.
The bill requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American owner within nine months was signed by then-President Joe Biden on April 24, 2024. The US Justice Department said at the time that TikTok posed a threat to national security of “enormous depth and scope” because through the app, China was spreading propaganda and using special software to encourage children to overuse the platform.
Another reason for the possible blocking was the suspicion that the Chinese government could obtain the data of TikTok users. Chinese law requires local companies to cooperate with state intelligence. The head of ByteDance, Shaw Ji Chu, previously promised that the data of American users would be stored on servers operated by an independent contractor, Oracle Corp, and would not be accessible to China.
The deadline by which ByteDance was supposed to sell TikTok ended on January 19, 2025. The company believes that the law violates the principles of freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In December 2024, ByteDance appealed to the Supreme Court to suspend the law, but on January 17, the court upheld it.
Chinese authorities considered selling TikTok’s US division to Elon Musk if the ban could not be avoided. ByteDance did not comment on this information.
On January 18, less than two hours before the ban took effect, TikTok shut down its operations in the US. The app was also removed from the App Store and stopped downloading on Google Play. However, after his inauguration, Trump said he would delay the ban on TikTok. Already 12 hours after the shutdown and a few hours after the president’s statement, the application began to resume work on the territory of the United States.
