It was ALMOST a farewell America for TikTok a couple of days ago if not for that last-minute plot twist just hours before it would have been completely gone from the mobile app stores in the US.
And so the saga continues…
It has been a grueling few weeks for the viral video-sharing app TikTok and WeChat, as they have become targets of the Trump administration due to its growing conflict on a geopolitical and technological power struggle with China — with the admin claiming the popular social media app and messaging app as China’s way of breaching the privacy of its users causing a national security threat for American users. This has been something that ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has denied over and over again.
According to Wallaroo, TikTok has over 100 million active users in the US and is especially popular among younger Americans. Because of this, a lot of TikTok users have been raging over Trump’s announcement regarding the ban of their favorite lockdown past time.
In the declaration presented by the Commerce Department in response to Trump’s executive order, the two Chinese apps would be restricted from being downloaded and will be unavailable for use for the US citizens on September 20 this year due to security issues. On a separate executive order made the last 14th of August, Trump issued an ultimatum for TikTok that it would be banned completely unless they sell the popular app to an American company by November 14.
Saved by the deal —TikTok Global in the Making
American multinational tech company, Microsoft Corporation, said that it was bidding to acquire the ownership of the social media app along with Walmart in early August. Soon after, Oracle Corporation joined the bidding.
The bidding ended with Microsoft raising the white flag after it failed to convince ByteDance to sell its U.S TikTok operations to them leaving Oracle and Walmart in the race. The ordeal ended with Oracle becoming the cloud provider for TikTok and will handle its user data in the U.S.
The deal went on with Oracle and Walmart to be given a combined 20% stake in a new company that’s expected to launch its operations in 2021. So does this mean that ByteDance owns the rest of the 80% of TikTok Global ?
To clear up the confusion, Oracle’s Vice President Ken Glueck relayed that Walmart and Oracle will invest and the rest of TikTok Global shares will be given to their owners. They also cleared that the company will be run by the Americans and that ByteDance will not be owning TikTok Global.
To clear up the confusion, Oracle’s Vice President Ken Glueck relayed that Walmart and Oracle will invest and the rest of TikTok Global shares will be given to their owners. They also cleared that the company will be run by the Americans and that ByteDance will not be owning TikTok Global.
In a statement, Oracle expressed the company’s confidence in running the popular app, “ We are a hundred percent confident in our ability to deliver a highly secure environment to TikTok and ensure data privacy to TikTok’s American users, and users throughout the world.”, says Oracle CEO Safra Catz. The new company also plans to create 25,000 jobs for the US as part of their expansion efforts for its global headquarters which will be stationed in the U.S.
With regards to the ban ordered by Trump, ByteDance thinks that it was absolutely unnecessary since negotiations are already ongoing to come into terms with regards to the ownership of Tiktok in America in order to address the claims made by the Trump administration about it being a national security threat to the country.
Despite the ban being on hold temporarily, Trump signaled that he wouldn’t approve a deal with TikTok for the U.S if it’s not under the control of the American tech companies. On the other hand, the Chinese government isn’t totally fond of the whole forced sale issue and would rather prefer it to be shut down in the country.
So far, the whole ordeal is still ongoing. The deal still needs to be reviewed by the US Government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). As for the users, the Americans are still on the lookout but are still able to enjoy sharing viral creative video contents and messaging with TikTok and WeChat.
