The forced sale of TikTok’s American operations to a group of U.S. buyers including Walmart and Oracle has been indefinitely postponed, The Wall Street Journal reports.
TikTok became a major target of former President Donald Trump, who claimed the Chinese-owned video-sharing service posed a security risk. However, it seems that President Joe Biden’s administration is not so dead-set on banishing the super-popular app from the United States.
The WSJ reported Wednesday:
“Discussions have continued between representatives of [TikTok developer] ByteDance and U.S. national security officials, the people said. Those discussions have centered on data security and ways to prevent the information TikTok collects on American users from being accessed by the Chinese government, they said.”
Threats to banish TikTok slowed in recent months due to successful legal challenges of Trump’s attempted ban. With Biden in office, it seems the TikTok ban is one of many issues being reexamined as part of a “broad review” of Trump-era policies.
“We plan to develop a comprehensive approach to securing U.S. data that addresses the full range of threats we face,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne. “This includes the risk posed by Chinese apps and other software that operate in the U.S. In the coming months, we expect to review specific cases in light of a comprehensive understanding of the risks we face.”
The TikTok sale that never was
The Trump administration’s concerns about TikTok came to the fore last year. Speaking with Fox News in July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said you should only download TikTok “if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Trump then threatened to ban TikTok if it was not sold to a U.S. company by September 15. However, this didn’t happen. Instead, TikTok remained the most popular app in the App Store on a monthly basis throughout last year. It also enjoyed the best single quarter of any app ever.
This doesn’t look like it will change anytime soon, either. App analytics platform Sensor Tower recently proclaimed TikTok the No. 1 app in January 2021 in terms of revenue.
Does news of the indefinite postponement of the TikTok ban surprise you? What do you predict 2021 holds for the popular video-sharing app? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
