Trump’s short reprieve for TikTok: Social media platform gets 75 more days to find US buyer

By Fatima Hussein and Sarah Parvini Associated Press WEST PALM BEACH Fla President Donald Trump on Friday mentioned he is signing an executive order to keep TikTok running in the U S for another days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership Congress had mandated that the platform be divested from China by Jan or barred in the U S on national safety grounds but Trump moved unilaterally to extend the deadline to this weekend as he sought to negotiate an agreement to keep it running Trump has not long ago entertained an array of offers from U S businesses seeking to buy a share of the popular social media site but China s ByteDance which owns TikTok and its closely-held algorithm has insisted the platform is not for sale My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK and we have made tremendous progress Trump posted on his social media platform The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional days Trump added We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal TikTok which has headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles has disclosed it prioritizes user safety and China s Foreign Ministry has noted China s leadership has never and will not ask companies to collect or provide figures information or intelligence held in foreign countries Trump s delay of the ban marks the second time that he has temporarily blocked the law that banned the popular social video app after the deadline passed for ByteDance to divest That law that was passed with bipartisan advocacy in Congress and upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court which disclosed the ban was necessary for national safeguard If the extension keeps control of TikTok s algorithm under ByteDance s authority those national defense concerns persist Chris Pierson CEO of the cybersecurity and privacy protection platform BlackCloak commented that if the algorithm is still controlled by ByteDance then it is still controlled by a company that is in a foreign adversarial nation state that definitely could use that facts for other means The main reason for all this is the control of input and the control of the algorithm mentioned Pierson who served on the Department of Homeland Defense s Privacy Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee for more than a decade If neither of those two things change then it has not changed the underlying purpose and it has not changed the underlying risks that are presented The Republican president s executive orders have spurred more than lawsuits in the little more than two months he has been in office but his order delaying a ban on TikTok has barely generated a peep None of those suits challenges his temporary block of the law banning TikTok The law allows for one -day reprieve but only if there s a deal on the table and a formal notification to Congress Trump s actions so far violate the law commented Alan Rozenshtein an associate law professor at the University of Minnesota Rozenshtein pushed back on Trump s claim that delaying the ban is an extension He s not extending anything This continues to absolutely be a unilateral non enforcement declaration he revealed All he s doing is saying that he will not enforce the law for more days The law is still in effect The companies are still violating it by providing services to Tiktok The national precaution risks posed by TikTok persist under this extension he announced The extension comes at a time when Americans are even more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago A current Pew Research Center survey revealed that about one-third of Americans announced they supported a TikTok ban down from in March Roughly one-third noted they would oppose a ban and a similar percentage declared they weren t sure Related Articles TikTok s new owner stands to inherit safety privacy lawsuits Trump to weigh proposals from Amazon Oracle and others for expected TikTok deal sources say Why no one is challenging Trump s executive order that keeps TikTok running TikTok is almost out of time to find a buyer Here s what we know Reddit s plunge fails to entice dip buyers as enhancement slows Among those who noted they supported banning the social media platform about in cited concerns over users details prevention being at vulnerability as a major factor in their decision according to the assessment Daniel Ryave in Washington D C runs the TikTok account SATPrepTutor with about followers It offers testing advice and helps Ryave find tutoring students He has Instagram and YouTube accounts but TikTok is better for reaching people he stated Almost all of my new students come through TikTok he revealed A big chunk of my revenue is from one-on-one tutoring and that s a great way to source clients When he heard about the extension he was relieved he noted This extension will allow students to continue accessing high quality short form educational content that they aren t seeking out elsewhere he mentioned AP Business Writer Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this story