TikTok partners with US technology company Oracle to manage the data of users from the United States. Various American media report this on Monday, September 14, 2020.
TikTok developer ByteDance, which operates from China, hopes to get out of a US ban that President Donald Trump had promised.
Trump gave ByteDance ninety days on August 14 to sell the American branch of TikTok to an American company. If there was not a deal in time, the US would ban the app.
According to Trump, TikTok is a threat to national security. He is afraid that the app, which is originally Chinese, will pass on data from American citizens to the Chinese Communist Party.
With the partnership, Oracle would become responsible for the data of US users of the video service. In addition, Oracle is negotiating to acquire a share in TikTok’s American arm.
Microsoft was also in the race to take over the US arm of TikTok, but earlier on Sunday Microsoft announced that they had been informed by ByteDance that the deal would not go through.
Chinese government would rather close TikTok than sell it
The news has not yet been confirmed by either side and it is unclear whether Trump and the Chinese government will agree to this partner construction.
At the end of last week, it turned out that the Chinese government would rather see TikTok close its doors than have the app forcibly sold. The country would fear it would appear weak if some of the app is sold to the US, sources wishing to remain anonymous have indicated.
Last month, Tik Tok sued the U.S. government in federal court over the Trump Administration’s decision to ban TikTok in the U.S. market. TikTok writes in the indictment that Trump has no evidence to support that TikTok is a threat to national security. The company says it has taken “extraordinary measures” to protect the privacy and security of US TikTok users.
