TikTok on Saturday said it will challenge the Donald Trump administration in court over app’s crackdown in the United States. The wildly popular short-form video app has been accused of breaching US users’ private data, causing a security threat to the nation.
As the trade war between the two worl superpowers – China and US, continues, president Donald Trump on 6 August signed an executive order stating giving Bytedance, the Chinese firm who owns TikTok, 45 days to sell its operations to an American company.
“Even though we strongly disagree with the administrtion’s concerns, for nearly a year we have sought to engage in good fought to rovide a constructive solution,” TikTok said in a statement.
“What we encountered instead was a lack of due process as the administration paid no attention to facts and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses. To ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the executive order through the judicial system,” it said.
Trump has claimed that TikTok has been used as a spy by China to track the locations of federal employees in the US, and observe corporate business. Beijing has denied the accusations time and again.
TikTok has been in talks with a number of US tech giants including Microsoft and Oracle to sell its US operations.
The Trump administration has also given ByteDance 90 days to dispossess the app before it gets banned in the US.
Meanwhile, TikTok has said it will file its suit next week amid the soaring tension with US administation.