Mark Zuckerberg reportedly encouraged Trump to crack down on TikTok, and now it's planning to sue

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published 24 August 2020

TikTok announced in a Monday blog post that it will sue the Trump administration.

President Trump has repeatedly tossed around the idea of a ban on the Chinese-owned video app, and earlier in August, ordered American companies to stop doing business with TikTok's parent company ByteDance. The order "strips the rights" of TikTok users "without any evidence to justify such an extreme action," TikTok said in its blog post, adding that it "strongly disagree[s] with the administration's position that TikTok is a national security threat. So it will file a lawsuit against the administration, arguing the order violates TikTok's due process rights.

TikTok's announcement comes after The Wall Street Journal reported Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have been the root of Trump's threat. In a speech in Washington, D.C. in October, Zuckerberg told Georgetown University students that "TikTok doesn't share Facebook's commitment to freedom of expression," posing a "risk to American values," the Journal writes. He reportedly repeated that message in meetings with Trump and other lawmakers, seemingly convincing them that cracking down on TikTok was a higher priority than regulating Facebook.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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