In the past few months, TikTok has been facing legal accusations from different law practitioners, and recently India banned the app from its country, and now Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been talking to President of America, Donald Trump about buying ByteDance’s TikTok.
The major allegation is the data collection practices, but the company has come out clean that they are not sharing its data with the Chinese government. Well, there have been rumors of the US banning the app, but it has come to light.
In order to prevent the US from banning the apps in the country, Trump said that a Chinese company must have to purchase TikTok before or on September 15, 2020, and shift its operations to the US.
Currently, Microsoft stopped talking about buying TikTok, but the Microsoft’s blog post says that “the two companies have provided notice of their intent to explore a preliminary proposal that would involve a purchase of the TikTok service in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and would result in Microsoft owning and operating TikTok in these markets.”
As it is unclear how President Trump will enforce the TikTok ban, as a network block like China’s Great Firewall would simply be uncalled for in the US. It is still unclear how Microsoft would sever those countries from other areas where TikTok operates, like Europe and Africa.
However, we should not rush over our heads as the discussions between Microsoft and ByteDance are still in the preliminary stages. Microsoft has reportedly put TikTok acquisition talks on hold, which will delay the talks and discussion on what’s further.
Before today, President Trump said that its administration will ban TikTok as early as Saturday, but it didn’t take action anyways. Even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on July 7th a ban was “something we’re looking at”.