TikTok may no longer be available in the US
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TikTok owner ByteDance reportedly won't sell to US firm , unless she can convince the court to strike down President Biden's old law requiring the sale or ban.
According to the bill signed by President Biden on April 24, 2024, TikTok owner ByteDance must either sell the platform to an American firm or face a ban. The company has nine months to comply, with a possible three-month extension if the deal is progressing.
According to Reuters, four unidentified sources say ByteDance will neither sell TikTok nor abandon the platform. The key to the problem, sources say, is that selling the platform would require ByteDance to also sell the algorithms that power both TikTok and the company's other businesses.
Sources also said that TikTok as a whole represents only a small part of ByteDance's operations. Closing the US platform will have a limited impact on ByteDance and will mean it will retain its algorithms.
A separate source told Reuters that U.S. users made up about a quarter of TikTok's global revenue in 2023. Two sources who spoke to Reuters said ByteDance's 2023 revenue was nearly $120 billion, meaning TikTok earned no more than $30. billion this year.
Where a sale would mean handing over its own algorithms to another firm, those algorithms also mean ByteDance cannot easily abandon the platform. The algorithms are reportedly registered as the company's intellectual property in China.
Sources also said that separating the firm's algorithms from TikTok would be difficult. Neither ByteDance nor the Biden administration has explained how TikTok would function as a global social media platform if it were disbanded.
According to Reuters, former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is considering creating a group of investors to buy the company.
The US government's position on TikTok is that because ByteDance is owned by a Chinese company, it may be forced to provide data on the platform's American users. ByteDance denies this and says it intends to challenge the new law in court.
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