After joining the website on a Sunday, Donald Trump, a Republican presidential candidate, gathered a million followers within hours. As the head of state, Trump had tried to ban TikTok on national security grounds.
He has entered his third bid for the White House by joining TikTok with an aim of getting to younger voters.He faces Democratic incumbent Joe Biden in a close race ahead of November 5th general elections for presidency.
On Saturday night, at real donald trump account, Trump posted a launch video. The video displays him among his fans at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event which was held in Newark New Jersey.
Biden’s campaign is already present on TikTok despite having signed into law legislation that would ban the app used by 170 million Americans if its Chinese owner ByteDance does not divest it as well.
ByteDance is currently litigating against the more than twenty law forcing it to sell TikTok by next January or face prohibition. The federal government wants to stop China from owning any more social media platforms under claims of national security whereas TikTok says it will not give US user data to China and has taken steps to protect user privacy
The courts blocked Trump’s attempt in 2020 to ban TikTok. In March he called it ‘a national security threat’, but said that banning the site would actually be harmful for young people and strengthen Meta Platforms’ Facebook service that he has condemned.
X boasts about 87 million followers while Truth Social gets over 7 millions users following him thus making him have significant social media presence.
A US appeals court last week set up an expedited schedule to hear legal challenges against this new law. The oral arguments were scheduled for September by U.S Court of Appeals for District Columbia Circuit This decision followed earlier joint request made this month by Tiktok, Bytedance, a number of tiktok content creators and justice department that sought a fast track timeline
