The "President Donald Trump vs. TikTok saga" is finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel after the U.S. court granted the company a new seven-day extension.
ByteDance, the Chinese-based company that owns TikTok, has to sell its assets in the U.S. to a new entity to meet the Trump administration's requirements. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) extended ByteDance's deadline from the previous November 27 until December 4.
In a report, ByteDance has been in talks with Walmart and Oracle since last September, allowing TikTok to operate in the U.S. under a new entity called 'TikTok Global.'
"We've already committed to unprecedented levels of additional transparency and accountability well beyond what other apps are willing to do, including third-party audits, verification of code security, and U.S. government oversight of U.S. data security," TikTok said in a statement.
President Trump said the company would be based in the U.S., which according to a Bloomberg's report, it will hire up to 25,000 people and make a $5 billion contribution to the U.S. economy.
Trump vs. TikTok
President Trump accused TikTok of selling its U.S. customers' data to the Chinese government. He launched an executive order against TikTok and WeChat, another social media made by a Chinese-based company, following the factless concerns.
The U.S. Army has also prohibited soldiers from accessing the app last year, as a report from The Verge reveals, which sounds pretty hypocritical considering the military has reportedly harvested millions of data through popular Muslim apps.
The company decided to clap back by filing a 'last-minute' lawsuit against POTUS in September, claiming that the ban would violate free speech protections.
Dilemmatic Choice
To alleviate the transparency fears, the Trump administration ordered ByteDance to sell its U.S. shares to an American business entity, which has been in talks with Walmart and Oracle.
However, ByteDance met with a dilemma following the request from the US. On the other hand, the Chinese government has tried to prevent TikTok's parent company from fulfilling the order.
According to DataReportal, Americans are TikTok's primary audience, and the ban would extremely hurt the company. The app has been downloaded over 100 million times in the United States alone, with millions of active users worldwide.
The app's most prominent creators are also based in the US. 16-year-old Charli D'Amelio, who has just surpassed an incredible milestone of 100 million followers, is TikTok's current reigning queen. Addison Rae came second with 69.9 million, and illusionist/filmmaker Zach King made 52.8 million followers.
