Description

In 2020, the United States government announced that it was considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from Donald Trump, the president of the United States, who viewed the app as a national security threat. The result was that the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance—which initially planned on selling a small portion of TikTok to an American company—agreed to divest TikTok to prevent a ban in the United States and in other countries where restrictions are also being considered due to privacy concerns, which themselves are mostly related to its ownership by a firm based in China.