Trump opens verified Triller account amid TikTok crackdown
Trump's first video has already racked up more than 1 million views
President Trump's campaign opened an account for him on TikTok competitor Triller on Saturday as TikTok's future remains uncertain ahead of a looming ban necessitating the social media phenomenon be acquired by a U.S. company.
So far, Trump has approximately 4,300 followers on Triller, although his first video has racked up 1.1 million views.
TRUMP OK WITH MICROSOFT BUYING TIKTOK
Triller, a light-hearted video-sharing platform, has grown from about 13 million active monthly users in October to 55 million active monthly users and 8 million active daily users around the world, a spokesperson for the company said.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has an estimated 800 million users, according to Business of Apps.
Triller is a video platform service that is in direct competition with TikTok. (Apple Store)
India, formerly home to one of TikTok's largest user bases, banned TikTok on June 29 amid growing tensions with China and security concerns. Triller became the No. 1 app in the country shortly afterward, the company said.
Celebs including Miley Cyrus, Snoop Dogg and Mike Tyson have active Triller accounts, and Triller lists companies including Spotify, Capitol Records and Universal Music Group among its partners.
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Trump issued a TikTok ban via executive order earlier in August, and on Friday, he ordered ByteDance to divest all U.S. assets, including TikTok, within 90 days.
“[TikTok's] data threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information – potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information and blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage," the executive order states.
The second executive order appears to be an attempt to "bolster" Trump's original order essentially banning TikTok and forcing it to find an American buyer, University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told FOX Business.
"However, the Trump campaign's decision to join and post pro-Trump videos on Triller, which is a rival of Tiktok, apparently is another means of forcing ByteDance to divest Tiktok or may simply be a political effort to reelect Trump," Tobias said. "Trump's Triller move does not seem to clarify his strategy for addressing Tiktok."
TikTok said it was "shocked" by the executive order and accused the administration of ignoring due process.
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"We have made clear that TikTok has never shared user data with the Chinese government, nor censored content at its request," the company said in a statement.
FOX Business' Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.