Trump signs executive order to pause US TikTok ban

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Trump signs executive order to pause US TikTok ban
Author: Martin Pengelly in Washington
Published: Jan, 21 2025 01:22

President’s order says temporary pause would give ‘opportunity to determine appropriate course forward’. Donald Trump has signed an executive order temporarily suspending the sale of the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, as mandated by a law passed in the US last year.

Trump’s order was one of a raft signed by the new president on his first day back in the White House. The order instructed Trump’s attorney general not to take any action to enforce the law mandating a sale or closure of the giant social media app in the US for a period of 75 days.

It said that pause would allow “an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans”. The order also directs the justice department to issue letters to other major social media and tech companies such as Apple, Alphabet’s Google and Oracle that work with TikTok “stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct that occurred during the above-specified period”.

When a reporter asked what the TikTok executive order is aimed at doing, Trump said: “Just gave me the right to sell it or close it,” adding that he had not yet made a decision on the right path forwards. Advocates of banning the video-sharing platform have long cited security concerns, given its ownership by ByteDance, a company controlled by the Chinese government, and the potential for personal information about millions of American users to be used for spying or propaganda purposes.

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