Team Joe Biden is busy in canceling the unwanted orders released by Trump and his administration. A few days back the newly appointed team revoked the ban applied on 10 major Chinese companies including Xiaomi. Now, in the latest order, Joe Biden halted the forced sale of the TikTok operation in the USA by Walmart and Oracle.
Major Events Related to TikTok under Trump Government
In August, Trump signed an executive order against Tiktok parent company Bytedance. As per the order, tiktok will no longer work in the US. The company had no option but to look for buyers to pay for TikTok’s US operations. Other than this, Bytedance also filed a petition in US court against Trump’s order. Bytedance filed a lawsuit against Trump, Secretary of State Wilbur Ross, and the US department of commerce.
As per the lawsuit, Bytedance claimed that the US government’s order to bam tiktok in the US is unconstitutional. Tiktok creators from the US also supported the Tiktok team with a common petition to challenge the US government order.
Microsoft and Tiktok agreed but Trump did not accept this deal. Oracle came to the picture with its bidding for the tiktok sale. Walmart also showed interest in buying Tiktok with Microsoft partnership.
On the other hand, China revised export law is against the selling of tiktok in September. The new law will prefer the closing of operations instead of handing it over to someone else.
The Commerce department drafted a two phases action on Tiktok. In the first phase, tiktok will exit from the US app store on or before September 2020. It will operate until November 12. After that, the second phase will be active. In that phase, 13 November onwards, it will no longer access the internet services in the US.
On September 19, the day tiktok would have been removed from Google and the app store, the commerce department gave a one-week extension to Bytedance for finalizing a deal with Oracle and Walmart. It was like a forced order to sell.
After looking at the non-changing behavior of the Commerce Department, Bytedance and Tiktok withdrew the lawsuits. On September 21, Tiktok and Oracle agreed with a final deal but gave confusing statements related to the ownership of Tiktok.
China also raised its concerns against the forced deal. They called it extortion. On Bytedance and tiktok demand, the US district court allowed preliminary injection to extend the tiktok ban. The court also provided a preliminary injection against the complete ban of tiktok on November 12.
Security Concerns Related to Tiktok Operations
When CNN declared Joe Biden as President-elect, tiktok ban orders became more uncertain. Tiktok and Bytedance filed a case against the Trump order and Joe Biden team fulfilled their wish by stopping the controversial sale orders of Tiktok.
The deal is indefinitely postponed but the new US administration is also very serious about the security concerns raised by the Trump government.
Emily Horne, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council said:
“We plan to develop a comprehensive approach to securing U.S. data that addresses the full range of threats we face, this includes the risk posed by Chinese apps and other software that operate in the U.S. In the coming months, we expect to review specific cases in light of a comprehensive understanding of the risks we face.”
U.S. National Security Spokesperson informed that the security concerns are valid. Data collection and manipulation with content censorship are the three major areas where Tiktok has to come clean.
