He is confident that he can make an agreement to pass it into American hands. The stakes are high for the 170 million users of the popular Chinese social networking application in, who hope to end the waiting.
Tiktok should have already been closed in the United States, in accordance with the law. Last year, the Biden government demanded that the US activities of the Chinese application be sold or prohibited its operation at national level due to national security issues.
Concerns focus mainly on how it manages the data of users in the US, as well as the fear of possible manipulation through the Chinese government.
The idea of forcing ByTedance – its Chinese owner – to sell to an approved owner outside China, received extensive support from both parties in Congress and was signed by Joe Biden last April.
The federal law targets applications that are “under the control of foreign enemies” and specifically reports Tiktok and ByTedance. This definition means that more than 20% of a company is not allowed to belong to people or companies in a country designated as a “foreign enemy” – a title given by the US to China.
The countdown to Tiktok
As the January deadline approached, the application was temporarily closed, but returned when Trump signed an executive decree to give more time to the sale negotiations. Did not appear again in App Stores until February.
The new deadline for the sale was April 5th – but the US president changed it again, giving 75 days to aspiring buyers of the application.
So far, the company has not changed hands. Chinese officials are publicly positioned against the sale, and have made it clear that the company’s privately owned algorithm is a technology that cannot leave China. It is not clear whether their attitude has been reviewed.
Who is the owner of Tiktok today?
Tiktok is a subsidiary of the private company byTedance. According to numbers released by Tiktok, about 60% of ByTedance belongs to global institutional investors. Another 20% belong to the founder of the company and 20% to the employees of ByTedance.
Although these numbers cannot be verified, since the company is not obliged to publish official reports, it seems that much of the company is already outside China.
Source: Deutsche Welle
