Acknowledging his concerns about national security and data privacy on TikTok, Trump said there was “a lot of good and a lot of bad” on the platform.
“A lot of people love it on TikTok. There's a lot of young kids on TikTok that would go crazy without them,” Trump said.
CNBC has reached out to Meta for comment.
TikTok, owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, has grown in popularity over the past few years, becoming an international sensation for its short videos.
This has alarmed regulators that the Chinese ownership of the software may share personal user data at the request of the Beijing government.
Byte Dance, like other Chinese companies, could be forced to release such information if asked, experts say. China's 2017 National Intelligence Law requires organizations and citizens to “support, assist and cooperate with state intelligence work.”
In 2020, the Trump administration failed to remove TikTok from app stores in the US due to these concerns. After that, Trump ordered Byte Dance to remove TikTok within 90 days. The effort, which at one point saw Microsoft bid for TikTok's US business, never came to fruition.
Now, US lawmakers are once again ramping up efforts to address concerns surrounding TikTok, with separate laws proposing a delisting of TikTok by Byte Dance or an outright ban. Current President Joe Biden, who has expressed national security concerns about TikTok, has said he will sign a bill to ban the app if Congress passes it.
Trump has softened his tone recently, saying he fears the TikTok ban will only serve to make Facebook more powerful.
In an interview on Monday, Trump said he felt TikTok was a national security risk given its Chinese ownership — but he also deflected attention from Facebook, noting the platform has privacy and security issues.
“If China wants something [TikTo]They will give, so it's a national security risk [that] Going up,” Trump admitted. “But when I look at it, I don't want to double down on Facebook. If you ban TikTok, Facebook and others — but mostly Facebook — will be a big beneficiary, and I think Facebook is very busy.”
“I think Facebook is very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections,” Trump added.
