(Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has joined TikTok, the short-form video social media platform owned by China-based tech giant ByteDance that he tried to ban ahead of the November U.S. election as president.
Politico, which first reported the news, said he posted a launch video to his account on Saturday evening. The video showed Trump greeting fans at an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout in Newark, New Jersey.
The account, President Donald J. Trump with the handle @realdonaldtrump, had more than 450,000 followers as of 0800 GMT.
ByteDance is challenging in court a US law that came into effect in April that requires the company to sell TikTok by January next year or face a ban. The White House says it wants Chinese ownership to end for national security reasons, but not through a ban on TikTok.
TikTok has argued that it will not share U.S. user data with the Chinese government and that it has taken substantial measures to protect the privacy of its users.
Trump’s attempt to ban TikTok in 2020, when he was president, was blocked in court. He said in March that the platform poses a threat to national security, but also that a ban on it would harm some young people and would only strengthen Meta Platforms’ Facebook, which he has strongly criticized.
President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign was added to the app in February.
(Reporting by Jahnavi Nidumolu in Bengaluru; Editing by Frances Kerry)
