Trump Gets Verified Account on TikTok Competitor Triller

President Donald Trump before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on June 27, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump now has a verified account on TikTok competitor Triller, another sign of the White House’s disfavor toward the ByteDance-owned video-sharing app.

Triller is one of several TikTok alternatives that have experienced a surge of downloads since Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 6 that would prohibit certain transactions with TikTok unless China-based company ByteDance divests it within 45 days.

Trump on Friday ordered ByteDance to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok within 90 days.

Internet influencers (L to R) Théo Bignonneau @theobignonneau, Sacha Sadok @sacha_sadok, Rafael Caplan @raf_cpl, create content at the @thefrenchhouseparis, a collab house in Paris, France, on May 29, 2020. (Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images)

TikTok is best known for viral dance videos that capture the American teenage zeitgeist, but U.S. officials have expressed concerns that user information could be passed by the Chinese-owned app on to authorities in Beijing.

ByteDance is already in talks to sell the North America, Australia and New Zealand operations of TikTok to Microsoft Corp. But with the company under a cloud, once-obscure competitors are stepping up their efforts to woo TikTok’s young userbase.

Trump’s Triller account had three short videos and a little more than 3,000 followers late on Saturday.

The Trump campaign and Triller did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

By Raphael Satter