Why Trump’s Been Threatening Your Teen’s Favorite App

When U.S. President Donald Trump declared TikTok a threat to national security, there were more than a few Americans who thought, “What’s that?” Others were confused about how a Chinese-owned service mainly known as a way for teenagers to share short videos showing off their dance moves could become part of what’s been described as a digital Cold War. After Trump issued a pair of executive orders banning U.S. residents from doing business with TikTok and WeChat, another popular Chinese-owned app, the administration also began exploring restrictions on the two biggest Chinese digital payment platforms, Ant Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd.

The app, which has a sister app in China called Douyin, is a popular platform for lip-syncing and dance videos. Users can film and edit clips up to 60 seconds long inside of the app and share them immediately. TikTok’s central feature is the ForYou page, where algorithms generate an infinite scroll of videos based on a user’s behavior. Fans consider TikTok special because of the sense that anything can show up on your page.