TikTok boss calls out Facebook, Instagram to team up against Trump ban

By Paul Squire Published September 18, 2020

A top TikTok executive is telling Facebook and Instagram to put their money where their mouth is.

TikTok interim global chief Vanessa Pappas called out the social media powerhouses after the Trump administration announced that TikTok would be banned from being downloaded from U.S. app stores starting Sunday.

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The ban — the precursor to a full ban on the popular video app in November — has been brewing for weeks over alleged national security concerns with how TikTok tracks user data. TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance.

After the ban on downloads was announced Friday morning, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri tweeted that the regulation “would be quite bad for Instagram, Facebook, and the internet more broadly.”

Pappas replied that TikTok agrees and called on Facebook and Instagram to join its legal challenge against the Trump administration to prevent the ban.

“We invite Facebook and Instagram to publicly join our challenge and support our litigation,” Pappas wrote. “This is a moment to put aside our competition and focus on core principles like freedom of expression and due process of law.”

While Facebook and Instagram have largely stayed on the sidelines publicly over the ban, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly lobbied President Donald Trump behind the scenes to shut down their biggest and quickest-rising competitor.

Though the ban on Sunday will block new downloads, you can still use the app if you have it downloaded, though you won’t be able to update it.

We’ve reached out to TikTok for comment about the ban, as well as Facebook and Instagram to see if they plan to challenge the regulatory action. We will update this story when we hear back.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Paul is the News Editor at Digital Trends. Before joining DT, Paul spent 3 years as an editor on the New York Post's digital…

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