Trump joins video platform Tiktok

Former US President Donald Trump has joined the video platform Tiktok. The 77-year-old published his first video on the app at the weekend, which he wanted to ban during his presidency. The 13-second clip shows Trump visiting an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight event in Newark, New Jersey.

“It's an honor,” said the right-wing populist in the video published on Saturday evening. By Sunday afternoon, Trump already had two million followers on Tiktok.

At the end of April, US President Joe Biden signed a law that would ban Tiktok in the US if the Chinese parent company Bytedance did not sell the app within a year. Bytedance and Tiktok filed a lawsuit over the ultimatum in early May.

US authorities have been accusing Bytedance for years of abusing Tiktok to spy on users in the service of the Chinese leadership. Tiktok denies the allegations. The company denies any ties to the Chinese government and assures that it has restructured itself so that user data remains in the US.

The platform is extremely popular and has around 170 million users in the USA. More than a billion people use the app worldwide.

During his presidency, Trump had campaigned to strip Bytedance of control of the app. However, the Republican, who is running against Biden in the presidential election in November, has since reversed course and rejected a ban on the app in the US.