Tech’s TikTok Dilemma: Follow the Law or President Trump?
The New York Times
The federal law banning TikTok has revealed a major schism among American tech companies: Some are willing to flout the law — and some, including Apple and Google, are not.
For more than six years, Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud computing company, provided technical support to deliver TikTok videos to tens of millions of Americans.
But over the weekend, Amazon faced a dilemma. A new law was taking effect banning TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, in the United States. Tech companies were barred from distributing and updating it or they would face financial penalties. At the same time, President-elect Donald J. Trump was telling tech companies he planned to pause enforcement of the law with an executive order.
Just hours before the ban took effect, Amazon appeared to comply with the law, according to a New York Times review of the way TikTok’s web traffic is handled. Instead, Akamai Technologies, a Massachusetts-based company that was already helping to deliver TikTok videos to phones, took over more of the technical support.
The change, which was picked up by digital forensics conducted by The Times, was one of the small behind-the scenes-maneuvers that showed how tech companies have diverged in their approach to the TikTok ban.
Apple and Google also chose to follow the law. They swiftly removed TikTok and other apps owned by ByteDance from their app stores. But Oracle, another tech giant, was still processing and serving TikTok user data. Akamai and Fastly, which speed processing times for TikTok videos, were also still doing so.
The schism highlights the dilemma the TikTok ban has forced on major American tech companies: risk alienating a mercurial president who made his support for TikTok an extremely public part of his inaugural policymaking, or risk breaking federal law and face up to billions of dollars in penalties. Several legal experts said it was unclear whether Mr. Trump’s executive order shields companies from the law’s monetary penalties or potential lawsuits.
