President Donald Trump said on Thursday the deadline set for Chinese company ByteDance to sell its popular short-video app TikTok’s U.S. assets would not be extended.
MICROSOFT IS EXPECTED TO BUY THE PLATFORM
“It’ll either be closed up or they’ll sell it,” Trump told reporters before leaving for Michigan. “There will be no extension of the TikTok deadline.”
TikTok is best known for videos of people dancing, which go viral among teenagers. But US officials have expressed concern that information on those who use the platform could be passed to Beijing. TikTok has said it would not comply with any request to share user data with the Chinese authorities.
As TikTok has scrambled to keep its American presence alive, Microsoft has emerged as a potential, albeit unlikely, savior for the platform.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that TikTok’s prospective buyers were discussing four ways to structure an acquisition from ByteDance, which include buying the app’s US operations without key software.