The TikTok Election

With both Donald Trump and Joe Biden now on the app, could it help determine the next U.S. president in November?

- KATHERINE FUNG

THE MOST DIVISIVE YET POPUlar social media platform is shaping up as one of the biggest players in this year's presidential election.

Despite criticism of TikTok from both sides, the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees are signaling that the Chinese-owned app will be critical to reaching voters, especially young ones, ahead of November.

President Joe Biden signed a law in April that would ban TikTok outright in the U.S. if Beijing-based ByteDance does not sell it by January 2025. And ex-President Donald Trump once tried to ban it with an executive order.

Yet on June 1, Trump launched a personal account with a 13-second video in which UFC President Dana White declared: "The president is now on TikTok." As of June 5, he had 5.4 million followers and his video had been viewed over 84.4 million times. And after months of avoiding it over privacy and national security concerns related to TikTok's Chinese ownership, the Biden campaign team joined the platform during Super Bowl in February.

Biden's campaign said it will use TikTok until Election Day, and added in a statement: "A fragmented media environment requires us to show up and meet voters where they are-and that includes online. TikTok is one of many places we're making sure our content is being seen by voters."

When approached by Newsweek, the Biden campaign said it has "a robust operation to reach young voters and move them to the polls" and has "built a deep bench of trusted messengers across social media platforms which dates back to 2020...and is continuing to grow now."