Trump signs Executive Order banning US business with WeChat and Tiktok

[realpetertdm]

Developing story

 

Summary

Quote

The Trump administration has announced sweeping restrictions on two popular Chinese social media networks, TikTok and WeChat, a sharp escalation of its confrontation with China that is likely to be met with retaliation.

Two executive orders, released late Thursday and taking effect in 45 days, cited national security concerns to bar any transactions with WeChat or TikTok by any person or involving any property subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. The order essentially sets a 45-day deadline for an acquisition of TikTok, which is in talks to be acquired by Microsoft.

- New York Times

(Whole article:)

Spoiler

Quote

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has announced sweeping restrictions on two popular Chinese social media networks, TikTok and WeChat, a sharp escalation of its confrontation with China that is likely to be met with retaliation.

 

Two executive orders, released late Thursday and taking effect in 45 days, cited national security concerns to bar any transactions with WeChat or TikTok by any person or involving any property subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. The order essentially sets a 45-day deadline for an acquisition of TikTok, which is in talks to be acquired by Microsoft.

 

Tensions between the United States and China have already escalated to levels not seen in decades over rifts in geopolitics, technology and trade. In recent months, Trump administration officials have challenged China on its crackdown in Hong Kong, its territorial claims in the South China Sea and its efforts to produce global tech champions. The campaign has been provoked in part by China’s more assertive posture, but also President Trump’s desire to convince voters that he is tough on China as the election approaches.

 

Mr. Trump’s advisers have zeroed in on technology companies, which they say are beholden to the Chinese government through security laws. Many companies that do business across the Pacific have been left paralyzed or begun to reconsider their partnerships, unsure of whether these tensions will spill into a new Cold War. The restrictions announced Thursday would also represent a further balkanization of the global internet, as nations continue to cut off foreign technology companies from one another’s markets.

 

In the announcement, Mr. Trump accused WeChat, made by Tencent, and TikTok, made by ByteDance, of providing a channel for the Chinese Communist Party to obtain Americans’ proprietary information, keep tabs on Chinese citizens abroad and carry out disinformation campaigns to benefit China’s interest.

 

“The spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States,” the president wrote.

 

Much remains unclear about the scope of the ban, including precisely which transactions would be covered. But it appears to have even more severe consequences for WeChat than for TikTok, which could be rescued through its talks with an American suitor.

 

WeChat is used widely around the world, particularly by people of Chinese descent, to communicate with friends, read news and carry out business transactions, and such a ban could effectively cut off much informal communication between people in China and the United States. Questions remain as to whether the order will affect businesses tied to Tencent, WeChat’s parent company, which is an investor in many popular American technology and gaming start-ups.

 

TikTok and Tencent did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A press officer for Microsoft declined to comment.

 

 

TikTok is in talks with at least three other American companies, including Microsoft, regarding a potential acquisition of TikTok’s business. Last week, Microsoft said it planned to pursue the negotiations for a purchase of TikTok’s service in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and would do so by Sept. 15.

 

Mr. Trump for weeks has been urged to intervene with TikTok, and by a range of advisers. Many of those advisers, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, had counseled Mr. Trump to follow the recommendations of a national security panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and allow Microsoft or another suitor to buy the Chinese-owned service.

 

But other advisers, like the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, pushed for more sweeping action. By Friday evening, as the president flew back to Washington from Florida, Mr. Trump told reporters that he did not want TikTok to be acquired by an American company and that he would use his presidential authority to bar TikTok from operating in the United States.

 

That position did not last long. Mr. Mnuchin and other officials scrambled to find people who would intervene with the president, imploring people like Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, to explain to the president why the Microsoft deal was a good option. Mr. Graham and Mr. Mnuchin cautioned Mr. Trump about a risky political calculation if TikTok simply went dark.

 

By Sunday, Mr. Trump had come around. But he has never seemed completely settled on one approach.

 

The threat of an outright ban on transactions is a serious blow for ByteDance and Zhang Yiming, the company’s chief executive, whose goal for years has been to connect the world through his various consumer apps. Nicknamed the “app factory” in China, ByteDance is home to more than 20 apps, including personal financial apps and productivity programs.

 

TikTok is far and away the crown jewel of ByteDance’s portfolio. Used by more than 800 million people globally, TikTok grew popular for its short, catchy videos that spread quickly and virally over social media channels. Mr. Zhang took steps to allow TikTok’s presence in some of the world’s most important consumer markets, like storing user data on servers in Virginia and Singapore, and hiring heads of business in the United States.

 

For many in China, the ban of WeChat will be a bigger deal. TikTok does not operate in China, where ByteDance instead offers an equivalent service, called Douyin.

 

WeChat, on the other hand, spans Beijing’s system of internet filters, connecting communities within and outside China. Exchange students use it to keep in touch with their families, investors use it to broker deals, and diaspora communities rely on it to keep in touch with relatives. Within China there are few alternatives to WeChat, because most other international messaging apps are blocked.

 

The order appeared to ban transactions between U.S. companies and Tencent, the owner of WeChat. Such a block would become a major difficulty for American firms in China, which use the ubiquitous WeChat social media app to do marketing, advertising and after-sales service.

 

Tencent is also widely invested in American gaming and social media companies, including Snap, Activision Blizzard and the makers of Fortnite, Clash of Clans and League of Legends. It’s not clear how the order might affect such investments.

 

Over the years WeChat went from copycat chat app to a force all its own. Crammed with services that enable online payments, e-commerce orders and other services, it grew into an inspiration for Silicon Valley. Companies like Facebook followed some of its cues in adding features to their own messaging apps.

 

Yet WeChat has also long been used by the police in Beijing to track dissidents. More recently, the app has emerged as a data conduit for the newly empowered internet police, who examine discussions for signs of political disloyalty. The app is also heavily censored, turning it into a sort of state-controlled filter bubble. Rumors not acceptable by Beijing are quashed, while others are left to spread.

 

Concern has been growing among Trump administration officials that WeChat offers the Chinese government not merely a way to gather data and information within the United States, but also a potent channel for spreading alternative narratives and disinformation. Matthew Pottinger, the deputy White House national security adviser, and Mr. Navarro have both been strong supporters of the executive orders.

 

But the national security cases against TikTok and WeChat are far from clear. Even within the national security community — and the nation’s intelligence agencies — there are doubts that the United States can successfully cut its networks and technologies off from China. There is also a realization that a good number of communications will run over Chinese-controlled computers, networks and switches no matter what the U.S. government does.

 

“While TikTok is being singled out in this executive order, their data collection and sharing practices are fairly standard in the industry,” said Kirsten Martin, a professor on technology ethics at the University of Notre Dame’s business school. “In fact, many fitness apps were banned from use in the military for tracking location data, but we did not ban them from all U.S. citizens.”

 

It’s not yet clear how a ban on WeChat or TikTok would be enforced, but users could adopt the same tactics many take in China when a service is banned and look for workarounds. If the app is taken down from app stores, people might find other ways to download it. If its use is blocked, they can turn to services that mask the origin of an internet connection. Even so, as Beijing has found out, many lack the savvy and patience for such technical fixes, and may cease using the service.

 

(New York Times)

 

The wording of the EO is a bit vague.

Quote

But the wording of one section in particular is less clear about that, as it would forbid “any transaction that is related to WeChat by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with Tencent Holdings Ltd...or any subsidiary of that entity”.

The section 1 (c) mentioned specifies that the government has 45 days to nominate just which of Tencent’s subsidiaries would be subject to this ruling (provided it’s not thrown out in the inevitable legal challenges).

While that would seemingly exclude companies like Epic and Ubisoft, since Tencent only has a minority stake in their overall ownership, it could potentially impact Riot Games, developers of League of Legends and Valorant, Supercell (Clash of Clans), Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile) and Funcom (Conan Exiles, Age of Conan), all of whom are either wholly or majority owned by Tencent.

Complicating matters further, Tencent develops games for other publishers, including Call of Duty: Mobile for Activision and the upcoming Pokémon Unite.

 

(Kotaku)

 

 

 

 

 

Video game companies owned by Tencent are NOT affected by this Executive Order.

 

 

My thoughts

This looks like a very complicated situation, for both sides. Banning any transaction with WeChat or Tiktok is going to have a lot of influence on US companies. I really don't have an opinion on this yet.

 

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/technology/trump-wechat-tiktok-china.html

https://twitter.com/SamAugustDean/status/1291576813685108736

https://kotaku.com/president-trump-now-targeting-tencent-who-own-riot-gam-1844642636

(more sources will be added soon)

Edited August 7, 2020 by LogicalDrm

[Tech_Dreamer]

45 days huh? Tik-Tok,Tik-Tok,Tik-Tok..

[xtroria]

I wonder what means of informal communication  could be used between someone in china and in US after this

 

I do agree with the ban.

 

One of my chinese acquintences was questioned in the airport when he flew back from australia because he criticized xi jinpooh to his parents in wechat

 

[handymanshandle]

Im glad to see TikTok getting the axe, fuck tiktok all my homies hate tiktok.
There's actual legitimate reasons for banning tiktok that aren't some toxic kids that are kpop fans that should lose their internet privileges.

[AlexOak]

Riot Games is owned by Tencent and 40% of epic games is also owned by the company.

Other things to mention

Spoiler

• Full ownership of Riot Games, the American developers of Valorant and League of Legends^[157]
• Full ownership of Norwegian publisher Funcom.^[158][159]
• Full ownership of Swedish developer Sharkmob, founded in 2017 by ex-Ubisoft developers and fully acquired by Tencent in 2019.^[160]
• 80% ownership in the New Zealand company Grinding Gear Games, the developers of the game Path of Exile.^{[161][162][163]}
• Approximately 84% ownership in Finnish mobile game developer Supercell, makers of Clash of Clans and Clash Royale^[164]
• 40% ownership of American developers Epic Games, the developer of popular online game Fortnite^[165]
• 20% ownership of Japanese publisher and developer Marvelous which own G-Mode and the majority of Data East's intellectual properties including: BurgerTime, Joe & Mac, and Magical Drop franchises.^[166]
• 18.6% ownership of Chinese company iDreamSky, which mainly develops and publishes mobile games for the Chinese market.
• 5% ownership of Chinese company Century Huatong, which operates games developed by FunPlus.^[167] Tencent became a shareholder through an investment in Century Huatong's subsidiary Shengqu Games.^[168]
• 17.66% ownership of South Korean mobile developer Netmarble.^[169]
• Approximately 15% ownership of American mobile game developer Glu Mobile^[170]
• 13.54% ownership of South Korean company Kakao, the parent company of South Korean publisher Kakao Games.^[171][172]
• 9% ownership in UK developer Frontier Developments^[173]
• 5% ownership of American holding company Activision Blizzard, the parent company of Activision, Blizzard and King^[170]
• 5% ownership of Swedish publisher Paradox Interactive^[170]
• 5% ownership in France's Ubisoft, purchased from Vivendi following Vivendi's failed attempt to buy out Ubisoft in March 2018^[174][175]
• 1.5% ownership of South Korean company Bluehole, the publisher of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
• Majority ownership in Switzerland-based mobile game developer Miniclip^[176]
• Capital Investment in Japanese developer PlatinumGames^[177]
• Minority share in German developer Yager Development^[178]

 

[LAwLz]

Clearly just Trump ans his administration hating China and wanting to weaken TikTok so that an American company can buy it. 

Don't let anyone fool you. This is not about privacy, nor is it about security. It's a business move rooted in racism against China. 

[JoostinOnline]

Honestly, I'm still not buying it. This is more of an anti-China thing than a pro-privacy thing.

 

[JoostinOnline]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

 

< Removed by moderation >

 

What you, and many other people, are failing to see is that there's a pattern here. A series of anti-China moves have been made. The only exception is that TikTok actually does have some privacy issues.

 

The government stopped Huawei without any actual evidence of wrongdoing. The whole thing was fear-mongering.

Edited August 7, 2020 by LogicalDrm

[LAwLz]

Just now, JoostinOnline said:

What you, and many other people, are failing to see is that there's a pattern here. A series of anti-China moves have been made. The only exception is that TikTok actually does have some privacy issues.

I am not even sure if TikTok has any major privacy issues we don't see in pretty much all apps at this point.

 

A lot of those accusations comes from a Reddit post which provided 0 evidence to support those claims. When someone pressured the guy to post proof he went "my hard drive broke so I don't have it anymore".

 

  

On 8/5/2020 at 5:25 PM, LAwLz said:

Someone linked me to a Reddit post where someone basically went "yeah I reverse engineered TikTok and it's basically a government spying tool", which seemed pretty scary. But after trying to look for evidence I have come up with nothing. The person who made the original TikTok "reverse engineering to see how bad it is" has posted jack shit since.

Here is the post from "bangorlol". As you can probably tell, there are 0 sources or evidence to back the post up with.

 

 

When people started pushing bangorlol to post evidence he replied with "the laptop I had the majority of my research on died", which I find very suspicious.

 

 

 

So I looked up another analysis of TikTok and found this:

On 8/5/2020 at 6:22 PM, LAwLz said:

I found this analysis of TikTok which is pretty interesting.

https://medium.com/@fs0c131y/tiktok-logs-logs-logs-e93e8162647a

 

It's made by a french security researcher and unlike the random Reddit post, this person actually backs his findings up. Here is the quick summary but you can feel free to read it for yourself:

Quote

In this article, I tried to understand what data does TikTok regularly send back to its servers. I decrypted the content of the requests and analysed it. As far as we can see, in its current state, TikTok doesn’t have a suspicious behavior and is not exfiltrating unusual data. Getting data about the user device is quite common in the mobile world and we would obtain similar results with Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and others.

 

From what I have heard some other experts say, they have seen pretty much the same things. TikTok collects stuff like screen resolution, OS version, device model and some other stuff, but the same can be said for pretty much all other apps these days (sadly).

 

[atxcyclist]

52 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

What you, and many other people, are failing to see is that there's a pattern here. A series of anti-China moves have been made. The only exception is that TikTok actually does have some privacy issues.

 

The government stopped Huawei without any actual evidence of wrongdoing. The whole thing was fear-mongering.

China has been given a lot of leeway over the past few decades, and they've certainly done enough recently that if there were considerable global animosity against the Chinese Government, it has been earned. Backdoors in hardware/software for even export markets, refusing to stop human rights abuses, massive environmental toll from dirty manufacturing, failure to crack down on their national issues like unregulated wet markets, and the list goes on. 

 

At this point the world should be guarding itself against China. That might sound callous but the Chinese Government doesn't care about you, I, anyone else, and not even their own citizens. Those trespasses have moved into the rest of the world (again), so it's time to make changes at a global level. If removing questionably secure apps like TikTok is part of that plan, then so-be-it. We can live without TikTok and WeChat.

[NZKshatriya]

Now, if we could also ban corporations from mining consumer data as well.

[LAwLz]

4 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

If removing questionably secure apps like TikTok is part of that plan

[Citation Needed]

 

 

  

1 minute ago, NZKshatriya said:

Now, if we could also ban corporations from mining consumer data as well.

Yeah but obviously Trump won't do anything US companies doing any of the things people accuse Chinese companies from.

It's way harder to try and drum up support against a US company than it is saying "China bad" and then everything you do is completely justified.

 

US government regulating what social media and and isn't allowed to be used? Yeah totally fine in peoples' eyes apparently. Because "TikTok and China bad".

[JoostinOnline]

7 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

China has been given a lot of leeway over the past few decades, and they've certainly done enough recently that if there were considerable global animosity against the Chinese Government, it has been earned. Backdoors in hardware/software for even export markets, refusing to stop human rights abuses, massive environmental toll from dirty manufacturing, failure to crack down on their national issues like unregulated wet markets, and the list goes on. 

 

At this point the world should be guarding itself against China. That might sound callous but the Chinese Government doesn't care about you, I, anyone else, and not even their own citizens. Those trespasses have moved into the rest of the world (again), so it's time to make changes at a global level. If removing questionably secure apps like TikTok is part of that plan, then so-be-it. We can live without TikTok and WeChat.

That's not really not relevant to my point.

[Arika]

10 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

 

At this point the world should be guarding itself against China. That might sound callous but the Chinese Government doesn't care about you, I, anyone else, and not even their own citizens. Those trespasses have moved into the rest of the world (again), so it's time to make changes at a global level. If removing questionably secure apps like TikTok is part of that plan, then so-be-it. We can live without TikTok and WeChat.

At this point the world should be guarding itself against The US. That might sound callous but the US Government doesn't care about you, I, anyone else, and not even their own citizens. Those trespasses have moved into the rest of the world (again), so it's time to make changes at a global level. If removing questionably secure apps like Facebook, is part of that plan, then so-be-it. We can live without Facebook and Twitter.

 

Fixed 

[atxcyclist]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

[Citation Needed]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/07/09/tiktok-serious-china-problem-ban-security-warning/#203bc8791f22

"First came the news that a beta release of Apple’s iOS 14 had caught TikTok secretly accessing users’ clipboards. TikTok was not alone—a raft of other apps were caught doing the same, and like those others, TikTok issued an explanation and an update. But it was TikTok that generated the headlines, partly because it had been caught before doing the same and had promised to stop, but mostly because seeming to snoop on millions of phones in the west is different if you’re Chinese."

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-14/tiktok-s-massive-data-harvesting-prompts-u-s-security-concerns

"

TikTok starts collecting data the minute you download the app, according to researchers. It tracks the websites you’re browsing and how you type, down to keystroke rhythms and patterns, according to the company’s privacy policies and terms of service. The app warns users it has full access to photos, videos and contact information of friends stored in the device’s address book, unless you revoke those permissions.

Even when you’re not singing and dancing around your living room, the app tracks everywhere you go using your IP address and GPS coordinates, providing the app with your precise location while working, voting, attending protests, traveling, or simply picking up milk from the grocery store. You can disable all GPS collection on your devices, but, in some cases, that would shut off access to apps that need location data to function, like Google Maps."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/13/tiktok-privacy/

"

Its U.S. privacy policy also says it gathers your country location, Internet address and the type of device you’re using. If you give it permission, it will also grab your exact location, your phone’s contacts and other social network connections, as well as your age and phone number.

That all adds up to a profile of you useful not only to target ads, but also to understand who you are, who your friends and family are, what you like, what you find funny and what you say to your friends."

 

 

So, the app doesn't just record all of your information, though it gives you an out but then limits features, and the demographic it's targeted to probably doesn't understand those risks, but it also collects contact data for other people on your phone contacts. That specifically is unacceptable for an app targeted at a demographic that cannot vote, drive, or sign a legal document. Your children shouldn't be able to haphazardly give your contact and identity information away to a foreign company for advertisement purposes or worse, nor should anyone else because you're unfortunate enough to be in their contacts. It is a massive security problem.

[poochyena]

Just now, JoostinOnline said:

Okay but those weren't the reasons given.

It was. The reason was for security. The reason why security is such a big deal with chinese apps is because of how large and dangerous of a threat China is.

[LogicalDrm]

*** Thread locked ***

 

This is about politics and policies, not technology. Cleaning crew will be taking actions in a moment. Any political discussion has been removed.

Edited August 7, 2020 by LogicalDrm