Another news about TikTok this morning. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the administration of President Joe Biden is said to give Bytedance an ultimatum to sell TikTok or the application will be banned in the United States. The WSJ cited inside sources who provided the information anonymously.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has been meeting with TikTok representatives for the past two years regarding the above issue. Among the options given is to force ByteDance to sell their stake to avoid any issues regarding the risk to national security.
The steps Joe Biden wants to take are similar to Donald Trump's original plan three years ago when he forced TikTok to be sold. It received opposition from China, which saw TikTok's algorithm as intellectual property that could not be sold.
The trade war between the United States and China is now spreading to the most popular social media application among young users. With over 1 billion monthly active users, TikTok is one of the top platforms in the world. The actions taken may not be liked by the young people of the U.S. but the government sees the risk of user data and the spread of propaganda as more important at this time.
This report comes after the United Kingdom reportedly wants to ban the installation of TikTok on civil servants' devices for the same reason. TikTok has repeatedly insisted it does not share user data with Beijing for intelligence purposes.
Updated – A TikTok spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that CFIUS is demanding that ByteDance's entire stake in the company be sold if it wants to establish operations in the United States.