Donald Trump wants to find a solution: Tiktok is threatened with extinction in the USA

A few weeks before the impending demise of the China-based video app Tiktok in the USA, Donald Trump intervened in the dispute. The US president-elect called on the country’s Supreme Court to suspend the law requiring the sale of the video app. Trump argued that he could save the platform through negotiations while also finding a solution to the US government’s security concerns.

Under the law, which came into force in April, the video app must change hands by January 19th. Otherwise it should be banned from the app stores in the USA and lose access to infrastructure.

Tiktok’s resistance in court has so far been unsuccessful. But at the request of the platform, the Supreme Court wants to take up the case. A hearing is scheduled for January 10th. The judges want to investigate the question of whether the law on the change of ownership violates the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech.

President Joe Biden could extend the deadline for Tiktok by another three months – but only if there are promising sales negotiations. Tiktok has so far refused to even consider changing ownership. The app claims to have 170 million users in the USA.

Trump, who will become the next US President on January 20th, failed in court in his first term in office to try to sell Tiktok. Recently, however, he spoke out against a ban on the platform. He cannot override the law himself.

The video platform belongs to the China-based company Bytedance. The law points to the risk that China could gain access to Americans’ data and exert influence.

Bytedance is viewed across party lines in the US as a Chinese company. Tiktok counters that Bytedance is almost 60 percent owned by Western investors. The company headquarters are on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. However, US politicians emphasize that the Chinese founder is in control thanks to higher voting rights with a share of around 20 percent and that Bytedance’s headquarters are in Beijing, where they cannot escape the influence of the authorities.

At the same time, Tiktok itself pointed out in the lawsuit that the Chinese government wanted to block a sale of the recommendation software developed in China as the core of the app. The algorithm decides which video is shown next and reacts very sensitively to, among other things, how long you watch a clip on a certain topic.