Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Last summer, former President Trump cast TikTok as the mascot for the US’s growing concerns over China when he signed a series of executive orders to erase the popular short video platform off app stores. It set off a wave of lawsuits keeping the orders from going into effect but left the door open for a future administration to take more serious action.
That’s what President Joe Biden did Wednesday when he signed his own order revoking these Trump-era bans and beginning the process to set new rules for software tied to the Chinese government. Biden’s order laid out a fresh framework for identifying the actual national security risks posed by these apps — a stark contrast with the chaos spurred on by Trump’s individual bans.