Trump to shut off TikTok, WeChat to new U.S. users on Sunday

[rooster59]

Trump to shut off TikTok, WeChat to new U.S. users on Sunday

By David Shepardson, Echo Wang and Alexandra Alper

 

A U.S. flag is seen on a smartphone in front of displayed Tik Tok and WeChat logos in this illustration taken September 18, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration will ban WeChat and video-sharing app TikTok from U.S. app stores starting Sunday night, a move that will block Americans from downloading the Chinese-owned platforms over concerns they pose a national security threat.

 

The bans, announced on Friday, affect only new downloads and updates and are less sweeping than expected, particularly for TikTok, giving its parent group ByteDance some breathing space to clinch an agreement over the fate of its U.S. operations.

 

WeChat, an all-in-one messaging, social media and electronic payment app, faces more severe restrictions from Sunday.

Existing TikTok users, on the other hand, will see little change until Nov. 12 when a ban on some technical transactions will kick in, which TikTok said would amount to an effective ban. For a Q&A on the real impact, click

 

"We disagree with the decision from the Commerce Department, and are disappointed that it stands to block new app downloads from Sunday and ban use of the TikTok app in the U.S. from Nov. 12," the company said in a statement. "We will continue to challenge the unjust executive order."

 

Trump on Friday did not indicate whether he would back a TikTok deal. He said a deal "could go quickly."

"We have some great options and maybe we can keep a lot of people happy," Trump told reporters. "We have to have the total security from China."

 

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business Network that "the basic TikTok will stay intact until Nov. 12."

 

The ban on new U.S. downloads of the widely popular app could still be rescinded by President Donald Trump before it takes effect if ByteDance seals a deal with Oracle that addresses concerns about the security of its users' data.

 

"This is the right move - ratchet up the pressure on Beijing, protect Americans," said Republican Senator Josh Hawley on Twitter.

 

The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to purge “untrusted" Chinese apps from U.S. digital networks amid escalating tensions with Beijing on a range of issues from trade and human rights to the battle for tech supremacy.

 

The ban on WeChat, used by over 1 billion people worldwide, bars the transfer of funds or processing of payments to or from people in the United States through it. Users could also start to experience significantly slower service or sporadic outages from Sunday night.

 

WeChat developer Tencent Holdings' called the order "unfortunate" but said it "will continue to discuss with the government and other stakeholders in the U.S. ways to achieve a long-term solution."

 

The Commerce Department order bars Apple Inc's app store, Alphabet Inc's Google Play and others from offering the apps on any platform "that can be reached from within the United States," a senior Commerce official told Reuters.

 

While the bans are less dramatic than some had feared, the Commerce Department said it could issue additional orders if it finds "that WeChat’s or TikTok’s illicit behavior is being replicated by another app somehow outside the scope of these executive orders."

 

Oracle shares closed down 0.3% after initially dropping 1.6% in pre-market trading.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union said the Commerce order "violates the First Amendment rights of people in the United States by restricting their ability to communicate and conduct important transactions on the two social media platforms."

 

The order does not ban U.S. companies from doing businesses on WeChat outside the United States, which will be welcome news to U.S. firms like Walmart and Starbucks that use WeChat's embedded 'mini-app' programs to facilitate transactions and engage consumers in China, officials said.

 

The order will not bar transactions with WeChat owner Tencent's other businesses, including its online gaming operations, and will not prohibit Apple, Google or others from offering TikTok or WeChat apps anywhere outside the United States.

 

On Friday, a U.S. judge in California declined to block the Commerce Department WeChat order, but set a new hearing for Saturday at 4:30 p.m. EDT to decide whether to issue an emergency order blocking the Commerce order in a suit brought by WeChat users.

 

The bans are in response to a pair of executive orders issued by Trump on Aug. 6 that gave the Commerce Department 45 days to determine what transactions to block from the apps he deemed pose a national security threat. That deadline expires on Sunday.

 

Commerce Department officials said they were taking the extraordinary step because of the risks the apps' data collection poses. China and the companies have denied U.S. user data is collected for spying.

 

Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 

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TikTok has 100 million users in the United States and is especially popular among younger Americans.

 

Many TikTok U.S. users did not express alarm over the new restrictions. "It's kind of like the boy who cried wolf," said Carter Kench, a 17-year old from Atlanta, Georgia with 2.4 million followers.

 

WeChat has had an average of 19 million daily active users in the United States, analytics firms Apptopia said in early August. It is popular among Chinese students, ex-pats and some Americans who have personal or business relationships in China.

 

The Commerce Department will not seek to compel people in the United States to remove the apps or stop using them.

"We are aiming at a top corporate level. We're not going to go out after the individual users," one Commerce official said.

Over time, officials said, the lack of updates will degrade the apps usability.

 

"The expectation is that people will find alternative ways to do these actions," a senior official said. "We expect the market to act and there will be more secure apps that will fill in these gaps that Americans can trust and that the United States government won't have to take similar actions against."

 

Commerce is also barring services for WeChat that will significantly reduce the usability and functionality of the app in the United States and halt data hosting within the U.S., content delivery services and networks that can increase functionality.

 

Commerce will bar the same set of technical transactions for TikTok, but that will not take effect until Nov. 12.

 

(Reporting by David Shepardson, Echo Wang and Alexandra Alper; additional reporting by Pe Le, Sheila Dang and Karen Freifeld; editing by Chris Sanders, Lincoln Feast, Carmel Crimmins and Andrea Ricci)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-09-19

 

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[PatOngo]

47 minutes ago, rooster59 said:

Trump to shut off TikTok, WeChat

......and while you're at it Donald, please shut down Twitter so people are no longer subject to your BS rantings! It may upset Kanye but really, NOBODY cares about him!

 

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by PatOngo

[Tug]

3 minutes ago, PatOngo said:

......and while you're at it Donald, please shut down Twitter so people are no longer subject to your BS rantings!

Let’s just shut down donald problem solved lol 

[shdmn]

I bet part of the reason bunker boy is doing this is because TikTok users trolled his Tulsa rally.  He can be a petty child that way, and most other ways.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by shdmn

[Thailand]

A limp wrist slap at best.If US propective users want to use either app I am sure they know how to access them.

[Matzzon]

32 minutes ago, Tug said:

Let’s just shut down donald problem solved lol 

Unfortunately that guy is to be compared to a duracell bunny. It just walks and walk and walks!!!

 

But this little stut off, will certainly makes him a little less popular bunny.

[Boon Mee]

This tiktok thing is nothing more than stealth communist Chinese infiltrating users personal details. 

Trump is absolutely correct in shutting it down. 

 

MAGA 

[bartender100]

Tried to sign up to Wechat once, wanted someone I know in China (I don't) to verify it. Is there an easier way?

[Morch]

39 minutes ago, bartender100 said:

Tried to sign up to Wechat once, wanted someone I know in China (I don't) to verify it. Is there an easier way?

 

1. Move to China.

2. More than one way to bypass, but not sure how legal (guess depending on country) all options are. Not hard to find on net, and probably more ways/sources shared in upcoming days as this 'ban' get rolling. Long time ago it was easy enough with VPN (or using two instances of to register).

3. Unless you have Chinese friends or China being a travel/business destination, there's no real point to it.

4. Trump's nonsense aside, I wouldn't voluntarily put this on a device I use for anything semi-serious.

[Matzzon]

2 hours ago, Boon Mee said:

This tiktok thing is nothing more than stealth communist Chinese infiltrating users personal details. 

Trump is absolutely correct in shutting it down. 

 

MAGA 

So, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Behance, WeChat and Tumblr does not do that? Just to take a few of the worlds 65+ popular social media networks.

 

Say like it is. You hate it because it´s Chinese and that you side with Trump against China as a country. At least that would be honest.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Matzzon

[Mick501]

President Trump proving yet again he's not afraid to take the tough decisions.  Why wouldn't he, given his impeccable track record in making the right call?  This decision simply would not have been made were Joe at the helm.   ManyPrivate messages of business people and politicians would have remained open to Chinese cyber theft.

[fdsa]

Trump forgot to include Telegram in the ban list.

 

MAGA

 

[LukKrueng]

10 minutes ago, Mick501 said:

ManyPrivate messages of business people and politicians would have remained open to Chinese cyber theft.

All those business people and politicians have other options to send "private" massages (which are open to non Chinese cyber theft) 

[Morch]

2 hours ago, Mick501 said:

President Trump proving yet again he's not afraid to take the tough decisions.  Why wouldn't he, given his impeccable track record in making the right call?  This decision simply would not have been made were  Joe at the helm.   ManyPrivate messages of business people and politicians would have remained open to Chinese cyber theft.

 

How was this a "tough decision"?

What impeccable record are you on? The one where Covid-19 response doesn't count?

The name is Joe Biden, could we dispense with imitating the President's childish name-calling habit?

Businessmen on TikTok? Yeah....

[allexx]

5 hours ago, Tug said:

Let’s just shut down donald problem solved lol 

Four more years...go Donald go. 

[tifino]

TikTok was the platform hosting Incitement; therefore the platform must go... 

and why shouldn't it have to answer for the drama!

 - after all Google, Facebook etc get punsished for the wrongdoings of their subscribers

Edited September 19, 2020 by tifino

[sammieuk1]

One old Thai general now having nightmares with no TickToks ????

[earlinclaifornia]

If you want to enjoy this video fun, just go the website. No need for an ap. https://www.tiktok.com/en/

[tomazbodner]

6 hours ago, shdmn said:

I bet part of the reason bunker boy is doing this is because TikTok users trolled his Tulsa rally.  He can be a petty child that way, and most other ways.

 

 

 

 

Yeah, he was so very pleased about how the rally went that he banned platform from which kids trolled him... So much pleasing...

[Grumpy one]

5 hours ago, Boon Mee said:

This tiktok thing is nothing more than stealth communist Chinese infiltrating users personal details. 

Trump is absolutely correct in shutting it down. 

 

MAGA 

And the tooth fairy is also real 

[chilly07]

Be careful he might try to shut down the www if it wins him the election

[Bluespunk]

7 hours ago, rooster59 said:

The Trump administration will ban WeChat and video-sharing app TikTok from U.S. app stores starting Sunday night, a move that will block Americans from downloading the Chinese-owned platforms over concerns they pose a national security threat.

Deflection deflection deflection 

[PremiumLane]

6 hours ago, Boon Mee said:

This tiktok thing is nothing more than stealth communist Chinese infiltrating users personal details. 

Trump is absolutely correct in shutting it down. 

 

MAGA 

Tin-foil hats on

[fdsa]

1 hour ago, PremiumLane said:

Tin-foil hats on

  

On 8/1/2020 at 2:54 PM, fdsa said:

Tiktok IS an National Security risk as it runs a proxy server on users' phones, allowing chinese hackers to hack anything while hiding their identities behind these users, i.e. using american IP addresses in their attacks.

https://www.google.com/search?q=tiktok+reverse+engineered+proxy+server&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab

 

 

... all social networks spy on their users and steal private information from users' phones. But there is a difference between sending US citizens' data to Chinese Communist Party and to US National Security Agency.

If I was a US citizen I'd prefer NSA over CCP.

[fdsa]

3 hours ago, LukKrueng said:

All those business people and politicians have other options to send "private" massages (which are open to non Chinese cyber theft) 

Unfortunately people do not understand that they are not safe. They see "Messages in this chat are end-to-end encrypted, no one even WhatsApp can read them" and they blindly believe this. I've had an exciting conversation once with a business man who was sure that Google can't read his secret emails because he had set up a mail redirection of all incoming emails from his gmail account to another email provider.

 

In our cruel world one has to be a hacker (in this word's original meaning) to be safe and secure. To sum up, the general public has no options to send private messages.

Edited September 19, 2020 by fdsa

[Oldie]

10 minutes ago, fdsa said:

Unfortunately people do not understand that they are not safe. They see "Messages in this chat are end-to-end encrypted, no one even WhatsApp can read them" and they blindly believe this.

With hidden keyboard loggers they can read it already when you type it. 

[Mick501]

4 hours ago, LukKrueng said:

All those business people and politicians have other options to send "private" massages (which are open to non Chinese cyber theft) 

There's many alternatives, as I suspect you're suggesting.  WeChat/TenCent is still in wide use.  You only have to look at Hilary to see how blind many are to the threat of cyber theft by state agencies.  It would be no surprise if the Democrats were still using this platform to send potentially sensitive information.

[Mick501]

4 hours ago, Morch said:

 

How was this a "tough decision"?

What impeccable record are you on? The one where Covid-19 response doesn't count?

The name is Joe Biden, could we dispense with imitating the President's childish name-calling habit?

Businessmen on TikTok? Yeah....

If you chose to get your worldly knowledge from 20 second CNN sound bites, that's a matter for yourself.  You can look up Trumps magnificent achievements ( despite endless false accusations), but you are not interested in fact.

 

The comment re business people etc was more aimed at WeChat.  Only got to look at Hilary to see how blind many are to the threat of state based cyber theft, and WeChat remains in wide use.  Easy to imagine Biden accidentally sending any amount of information, and with his China First policies, there's no way he would have taken this step.

[stevenl]

37 minutes ago, Mick501 said:

There's many alternatives, as I suspect you're suggesting.  WeChat/TenCent is still in wide use.  You only have to look at Hilary to see how blind many are to the threat of cyber theft by state agencies.  It would be no surprise if the Democrats were still using this platform to send potentially sensitive information.

Strange reference to Hillary when since then many instances of WH workers circumventing WH servers have come out, amongst them Ivanka.

So what they learned from Hillary is not how to increase safety, but how to flaunt rules. Rules Hillary but in the spotlight.

[opalred]

it would be great if he shut down tweeter