TikTok decides to challenge President Trump’s executive order

NEW YORK: Social media app TikTok has decided to file a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning the Chinese-owned app.

According to a statement issued by TikTok today, “Even though the company strongly differs from the Administration’s concerns, for almost a year we have sought to engage in good faith to give a constructive solution”.

“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,” it added.

“To make sure that the rule of law is not abandoned and that our corporation and users are treated fairly, we have no option but to challenge the Executive Order through the judicial system,” it said, adding it expects to file its suit next week.

TikTok’s kaleidoscopic feeds of short video clips feature everything from hair-dye tutorials to dance routines and jokes about routine life.

READ MORE: TikTok removes 380,000 videos in US for hate content

The Social media app has been downloaded 175 million times in the United States and more than a billion times around the globe.

The company has said it has never provided any United States user data to the Chinese government, and Beijing has termed Trump’s crackdown as political.

Earlier, Trump claimed that TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.

On August 6, President Donald Trump had announced sweeping bans on transactions with China’s ByteDance, owner of video-sharing app TikTok, and Tencent operator of the WeChat app within 45 days,

The executive order is a major escalation of tensions with Beijing as the Trump administration said it was stepping up efforts to purge Chinese apps from US digital networks and called the Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok and messenger app WeChat as “significant threats.”

Tiktok had come under fire over national security concerning data collection. Trump had issued the orders under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law that grants the administration sweeping power to bar US firms or citizens from trading or conducting financial transactions with sanctioned parties.