Amid a shocking development, the Chief Executive Officer of the Chinese application TikTok, Kevin Mayer, stepped down from his position and submitted the resignation. The company conveyed the same through its official statement.
The business house famous for its record-breaking video sharing app had sued the President of US Donald Trump’s administration due to its orders which put bans on the platform from working in America. Another employee of the company had separately taken the matter to court over this. They called it a way to ignite anti-China notions, using the same as a ploy for his re-election campaign.
The now-former TikTok CEO wrote a letter addressing the staff of the company that read, “It is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company.”
Due to the current situation, the General Manager of TikTok, Vanessa Pappas is going to replace Kevin Mayer temporarily until another CEO is employed. Mr. Kevin had taken up the position of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at the parent company of the Chinese app, ByteDance in June before becoming the CEO of TikTok. His role involved to directly report to Yiming Zhang, the founder of the business house and its CEO.
According to the video-sharing platform’s website, Mr Kevin, following a successful and befitting run at Disney where he worked last as the Chairman for the direct-to-consumer segment along with the international business deals, joined ByteDance.
His chief duty was to supervise the development and efficient execution of the things pertaining to Disney+ that is Disney’s own streaming network functioning globally and merged with HotStar in India.
After the White House’ accusation and terming of the California-based companies as a ‘national security threat’, TikTok and ByteDance retaliated by rubbishing it, further defending themselves saying that they ensured to take and have always taken “extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s US user data.”
The executive order ruled out on August 6th as a part of Trump’s ideology and his call to ban TikTok was also criticized by the company. It said that the President had taken the move to take his “anti-China rhetoric” campaign further and make it bigger to use as a strategy before the upcoming elections slated to be held on November 3rd. The current President has also decided to become a part of the race and is set to run in the elections again to retain his supreme position and continue as a second term.
