A law passed by Congress in the United States effectively banned the popular TikTok social media app in the United States. Despite briefly disappearing from the App Store in the United States, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to halt enforcement of the law for 75 days, and even more recently granted another 90-day extension to that.
The force and effect of the aforementioned legislation would ban TikTok in the United States because lawmakers feared its Chinese ownership would be influenced by the Communist Chinese government as a backdoor into Americans’ personal data, or worse, pose a risk of algorithm manipulation that could spread harmful influence and propaganda.
One way that this legislation allowed TikTok to avoid being banned in the United States was for the app to be sold to an American company, and it now seems that TikTok parent company ByteDance is working toward that end, The Information reports.
While the article is hidden behind a paywall, the gist of the story is that TikTok plans to sell the new United States-specific version of the app to a group of investors in the United States, which would allegedly satisfy the legislation’s requirements. This would not only allow TikTok to operate in the United States lawfully but also help ensure that Americans’ data isn’t transmitted to dangerous entities abroad.
If you were wondering what would happen to the existing TikTok app, it seems the plan would involve immediately ending its offer for download in the United States App Store, while also pushing existing users to migrate over to the new U.S.-based app instead. Both apps would continue to operate, but just in different parts of the world and with different entities overseeing them.
It remains to be seen if or when all of this will materialize, but it’s interesting to see the TikTok issue growing legs and starting to move given all the political controversy about it in recent months. The iDB team will continue to keep users apprised of the latest developments on this topic.