TikTokers ruined Trump’s rally and now his campaign is fighting back with attack ads
Move over, Huawei. Beat it, Twitter. The Trump administration has anointed a new tech bogeyman: the viral dance app TikTok.
Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram pages are running four advertisements warning that “TikTok is spying on you!” and saying Americans deserve privacy. The ads link to a survey asking whether users think Trump should ban TikTok in the U.S., and then, of course, prompting survey takers to donate to the Trump campaign.
New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz first spotted the ads, which anyone can view in the Facebook Ads Archive.
The graphics are truly *chef’s kiss.*
Image: screenshot / facebook
TikTok is just the latest social media company that Trump has attacked to drum up donations. His campaign briefly ran ads against Snapchat and Twitter for “meddling” in the 2020 elections. Social media companies are a favorite target for Republicans, who stoke their base’s outrage when they (baselessly) claim these platforms “censor conservative voices.”
However, the TikTok attack is a horse of a different color. The Chinese company ByteDance owns TikTok, which has raised national security concerns over whether the app might be sending U.S. user data to China. TikTok says it does not do that, nor would it comply with requests. However, a broad 2017 Chinese law requires companies to comply with national security data gathering requests when asked.
Coincidentally, or not so much, over the past month, Trump administration officials have glommed on to anti-TikTok sentiment as politicians and private companies alike have warned employees agai
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