TikTok, the popular Chinese short-video making platform continues to struggle after being banned in India, its largest international market.
US President Donald Trump also signed a ban on TikTok on August 6. The US is concerned that TikTok can share US users’ data with the Chinese government. However TikTok's parent ByteDance disputed the concern.
The popular short-video making app has around 100 million monthly users in the US and around 690 million users globally.
ByteDance, had been in talks to sell its U.S. business to Oracle or Microsoft to avoid the ban. Oracle won the deal to take over TikTok’s US operations beating rival Microsoft, according to reports. Microsoft also confirmed that ByteDance refused selling TikTok’s US operations to it.
However the deal faces uncertainty as The Treasury Department along with The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) is reviewing it.
The CFIUS is responsible to review such deals of national security risk.
“We’ll need to make sure that the code is, one, secure, Americans’ data is secure, that the phones are secure,” said Steven Mnuchin, treasury secretary.
Oracle would manage TikTok’s U.S. user data, if the deal is approved. ByteDance would still retain its majority stake in TikTok, as per the proposal.
The US is not happy with ByteDance still remaining TikTok's owner as per the proposal in the deal.
