TikTok may be forced to divest from its Chinese owner Bytedance if it wants to stay in the US.
👉 Background: TikTok is the highly addictive social media platform that shows us part educational, part gossip, part GRWM-mind-numbing content. Its users spend an average of 89 minutes a day on the app.
👉 What happened: For the past few years, TikTok has been under scrutiny for its Chinese ownership. Now, TikTok is undergoing a national security review in the US, which would force the Tok to create a wall between its data and the Chinese government.
👉 What else: But, if an agreement is not landed, TikTok may be forced to divest from its Chinese owner Bytedance if it wants to stay in the US.
💡The political tensions between China and the US extend well beyond the political sphere.
💡Over the years, China has been known to use regulations to stop its tech champions from being successful on a global scale:
💡So it seems like TikTok is between a rock and a hard place… trying to please the US government and the Chinese government at the same time.
Sign up for Flux and join 100,000 members of the Flux family