New Delhi: Showcasing his blatant disfavour towards the infamous video app TikTok, US President Donald J Trump now has a verified account on Triller, a competitor of the video-sharing app. This can be taken as another sign of the White House’s disapproval towards the ByteDance-owned app.
Triller is one of many alternatives to TikTok and has also experienced a surge in downloads after Trump signed an executive order on August 6. This order would prohibit certain transactions with TikTok unless ByteDance divests it within 45 days. As on Friday, Trump ordered ByteDance to divest the US operations of TikTok within 90 days.
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Late night on Saturday, Trump’s Triller account had three short video
clips and a little more than 3,000 followers. Many view this as a ploy of the President to reach the younger generation ahead of the Presidential elections on November 3.
Meanwhile, ByteDance is already in talks to sell the North America, New Zealand and Australia operations of TikTok to Microsoft Corp. Additionally, Microsoft may also be looking to buy ByteDance’s India operations.
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Known to the teenage zeitgeist for its viral dance videos, TikTok had garnered the ire of American officials as they have expressed concerns that user information could be passed by the Chinese-owned app on to Beijing authorities. This was also one of the major concerns for the Indian government as they banned many apps from functioning on Indian soil and TikTok was one of them.
No statements have been issued either by Triller or by TikTok regarding this matter so far.
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