The United States government has recently taken a hard stance towards Chinese-owned video App TikTok, ordering the app to be sold or risk a ban as it seeks to resolve national security concerns.
The recent demand to sell the app is a significant move in President Biden’s administration towards TikTok, which has been under scrutiny for years over concerns that China could request vital users’ data from the app.
The White House had initially been negotiating an agreement with TikTok on the need to apply safety measures to its data, to eliminate a need for the parent company ByteDance to give out vital information on the app.
Meanwhile, the demand for a sale of the app coupled with the White House’s support for legislation that would ban the app has seen President Joe Biden harden his administration’s approach towards TikTok.
TikTok however expressed dissatisfaction at the U.S. government’s decision. In defense of the app, the company claimed that its security proposal which involves storing American data in the United States offered the best protection for users without any breach of private information.
A spokesperson at TikTok said, “If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem, a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access. The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S based protection of U.S data and systems”.
TikTok further revealed that it has undertaken an effort to transfer all US-based data to the U.S. as part of an initiative it calls Project Texas.
Investors King understands that the U.S. government’s decision to ban TikTok began under President Trump’s administration, in which he made a decision to ban the app unless TikTok parent company Bytedance sold its stake to an American company.
A deal was reached for ByteDance to sell part of TikTok to Oracle, but reports reveal that the deal never came to fruition. Meanwhile, TikTok remains extremely popular and is used by two-thirds of teens in the U.S. Statistics reveal that the app has about 80 million monthly active users in the United States. 60% are female, and 40% are male, and 60% are between the ages of 16-24.