New York/San Francisco — Days after the US government challenged Facebook’s growing power over social media in a Congressional hearing, the Trump administration handed the company a gift. 

Late last week, the president said he planned to shut down Facebook’s most formidable challenger: Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok. That threat sparked a panic among users that their digital clubhouse would soon be taken away or sold to Microsoft. It sent many popular TikTokers racing to move their creative endeavours to Instagram, the rival mobile app owned by Facebook...

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