Why is TikTok for sale?
Donald Trump has accused the video-sharing social networking service, which is wildly popular in the US, of being a threat to national security. He claims its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, would give the Chinese government access to user data upon request. TikTok denies the accusation.
The US president has
demanded a full sale of TikTok to an American owner. In August, he gave ByteDance 90 days to sell up
or face a shutdown. He later
issued twin executive orders banning US transactions with ByteDance and also the owner of the Chinese messaging and payments app WeChat.
But later that month China complicated a potential sale, with an
amendment to its export restrictions requiring companies to seek government approval before exporting Chinese tech. It was widely believed to be aimed at the technology driving TikTok’s algorithm – AI interfaces, voice recognition, and content recommendation analysis.
Last week, the US department of commerce said if an acceptable deal was not reached it would ban new downloads and updates of
TikTok from 20 September before banning the app completely on 12 November.
TikTok: why it is being sold and who will own it