TikTok says it has 700mn monthly users globally, 100mn in US
San Francisco, Aug 25 (IANS) TikTok has more than 700 million monthly active users (MAUs) globally including over 100 million in the US, according to statistics revealed by the short video sharing platform in its lawsuit against the Donald Trump administration.
TikTok filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging an August 6 executive order that threatened to effectively ban the app next month.
The number of global monthly active users could be even higher as the figure represented an update till July.
TikTok said that it surpassed two billion global downloads this month, CNBC reported.
In the US, TikTok has over 50 million daily active users (DAUs).
In a blog post announcing the decision to sue the Trump administration, TikTok said that it employs 1,500 employees in the US, while the company was also planning to create 10,000 more jobs in the country spreading across California, Texas, New York, Tennessee, Florida, Michigan, Illinois, and Washington State.
With 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of this year, Facebook is still way ahead of TikTok in terms of user base.
Saying that it strongly disagrees with the Trump administration’s position that TikTok is a national security threat, the company alleged that the “Administration failed to follow due process”.
The administration neither provided evidence that TikTok was an actual threat, nor justification for its punitive actions, the short video-sharing platform owned by Chinese unicron ByteDance said.
“To be clear, we far prefer constructive dialogue over litigation. But with the Executive Order threatening to bring a ban on our US operations — eliminating the creation of 10,000 American jobs and irreparably harming the millions of Americans who turn to this app for entertainment, connection, and legitimate livelihoods that are vital especially during the pandemic — we simply have no choice,” TikTok said.
The Trump administration issued another executive order on August 14, giving ByteDance an option to divest its TikTok business in the US within 90 days.
–IANS
gb/na
