As President Joe Biden threatens to potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. over national security concerns, he embraced another popular app owned by the same Chinese company.
Last week the White House’s official Instagram account posted a flashy video of Biden and former President Barack Obama. In it, a photo of the two of presidents, awash in sparkling confetti, does cartwheels on screen as catchy electronic music plays.
The video, which garnered nearly 57,000 likes and more than 6,000 comments, was created using the app CapCut, which, like TikTok, is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
According to an NBC News review, the White House video is frame-for-frame the exact same as a popular CapCut template, though the company’s watermark isn’t visible and the White House’s version appears slightly zoomed in. It is possible to download the template without the watermark. The music — an audio file called "Happy With You" that originated from the TikTok Official Sound Studio — is the same music that accompanies the template.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council, John Kirby, declined to say on Wednesday whether Biden has the same concerns about CapCut, which creates templates for users to use on video-oriented social media platforms, as he does about TikTok, a video sharing app.
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