For those who have been paying attention, it might not be a complete surprise that Oracle and Walmart’s plan to grab controlling stakes in the TikTok platform has collapsed under a new administration committed to reviewing the entirety of domestic and foreign policy.
Specifically, though, aides are reporting that Joe Biden is reviewing the situation with TikTok, where his predecessor Donald Trump had sought to ban the platform due to national security concerns about the possibility of data transmission from the social media platform to the Chinese government.
Reuters reports today that a TikTok ban has been “pushed back indefinitely” and that “discussions have continued” between ByteDance and U.S. officials.
Previously, any action on TikTok had already been delayed by numerous federal courts blocking the U.S. Department of Commerce where the Trump administration was bringing its case forward.
“TikTok, which has over 100 million users in the United States, features a simple user interface, background music options and various special effects to help users make short-form entertaining videos,” writes Chavi Mehta for Reuters. In the past, various experts and officials have asked how this type of operation presents a national security threat, with scant explanation from protectionists.
A prior plan by Microsoft to acquire the company fell apart, to leading to this bit of gaslighting by the American firm:
“ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft. We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests. To do this, we would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting disinformation, and we made these principles clear in our August statement. We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas.”
So what’s next for ByteDance? Keep an ear to the ground on these types of flame wars over control of social media ecosystems.