TikTok Strikes Deal To Split Off an American Version, Ending Long Legal Saga
by https://www.nytimes.com/by/david-mccabe, https://www.nytimes.com/by/emmett-lindner · NY TimesTikTok said on Thursday that its Chinese owner, ByteDance, had sold a majority stake in the app’s U.S. operations to a group of non-Chinese investors, concluding a six-year legal saga that saw the app banned by Congress, ensnared in politicking between global superpowers and forced into a 14-hour blackout in the United States.
The new investors — which include the software giant Oracle; MGX, an Emirati investment firm; and Silver Lake, another investment firm — will own more than 80 percent of the new entity. That list will also include the personal investment entity for Michael Dell, the tech billionaire behind Dell Technologies, and other firms, TikTok said. The deal is intended to loosen TikTok’s ties to China and address national security concerns that Beijing could use the app to surveil or manipulate its more than 200 million users in the United States.
The agreement, which was hammered out over more than a year, resolves existential questions about TikTok’s future. The app — with its unceasing feed of lip syncs, political endorsements, conspiracy theories and skin care tutorials — would have had to leave the American market if it did not separate from ByteDance.
It was also the end of a legal odyssey. Since 2019, universities, several branches of the U.S. military, the vast majority of the House of Representatives and both President Trump and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. have tried to ban or block TikTok, with unanimous support from the Supreme Court. Influencers, mobilized by the app, lobbied politicians and mounted protests to save their feeds and follower counts. TikTok became embroiled in a trade war between the United States and China, as the nations engaged in a heated contest over technology and industrial supremacy.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.