Major changes could be in the cards for TikTok. President Biden on Wednesday signed into law a $95 billion plan that delivers aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and also mandates that TikTok owner ByteDance must sell the hugely popular app or else it will be banned in the US.
ByteDance is now on the clock and has nine months to divest from its US subsidiary (with a further three-month extension if a deal is in the works but not yet completed). As such, any potential ban wouldn’t happen soon, and that’s to say nothing of any legal battles that could extend the timeline or lead to any other changes.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in a video posted on TikTok (via THR), “Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere.” Chew aded, “Make no mistake, this is a ban, a ban on TikTok and a ban on you and your voice. Politicians may say otherwise. But don’t get confused.”
“TikTok gives everyday Americans a powerful way to be seen and heard,” Chew added.
According to ByteDance, TikTok has more than 170 million users in America. Today’s news means nothing for the TikTok app you might already have installed on your phone. It will continue to work normally and any potential ban or change to the app presumably would not go into effect anytime soon.
This is all happening because US lawmakers–Republican and Democrat alike–along with other experts and officials, have said TikTok poses a potential security threat. TikTok has maintained for years that the app is not secretly a mechanism of the Chinese government and that it does not share data about US users and would not if asked to do so, according to the AP.
In 2020, Microsoft said it wanted to buy TikTok but later moved away from those plans. More recently, it was reported that former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick was putting together a team to explore buying TikTok.
Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.
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