Earlier this month, the Trump administration indicated that it planned on banning the mega popular social media app TikTok. And then things escalated when the president said that he could ban TikTok as early as today. A TikTok ban still has yet to take place at the time of this writing, and while the Trump administration has put forward an explanation as to why it wants to ban the app (citing security concerns and the potential for the Chinese government to collect data on American citizens), another theory is gaining steam online.

Basically, the theory is that Trump wants to ban TikTok because users of the app ruined his Tulsa, Oklahoma rally that took place on June 20. For the uninitiated, nearly 1 million TikTok users decided to reserve tickets for the Tulsa rally, inflating the numbers so that the Trump campaign truly believed that almost 1 million people were wanting to attend. However, in reality, only a little over 6,000 people actually showed up to the event, and so TikTok users succeeded in essentially trolling the president.

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The escalation against TikTok did not begin until after Trump's Tulsa rally, which is why people believe the possible TikTok banning has more to do with that than it does genuine security concerns. After all, TikTok has been around for years, and while it has been criticized in the past by some politicians, it didn't truly get the spotlight until a couple weeks after Trump's rally was foiled.

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However, it's now looking as though a TikTok ban may not actually take place. TikTok developer ByteDance is apparently looking to sell its stake in the app to a US company so that the app can remain available in the country. Rumors have indicated that Microsoft may even buy TikTok, but nothing official has been announced. TikTok has released a video publicly addressing concerns about the ban, though it doesn't seem to think that such a ban is actually going to happen.

Meanwhile, the TikTok app is currently flooded with countless videos about the potential ban, and many of its top creators have started asking their fans to follow them on other forms of social media in case the ban takes place. If the TikTok ban does take place, it will definitely be interesting to see how the general public reacts to it, and if its top stars are able to find success on other platforms.

If the United States does ban TikTok, it wouldn't be the first country to do so. India banned TikTok earlier this year, along with a number of other Chinese-developed mobile apps.

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Source: Forbes