US President Donald Trump has said a “very wealthy group of people” have agreed to buy social media app TikTok from its Chinese owners.
Hinting at a deal which could safeguard the future of the app, Trump said specific details on the buyer will be revealed in two weeks and offered little further detail.
He said: “We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way. I think I’ll need, probably, China approval, and I think President Xi will probably do it.”
Earlier in June, Trump signed an executive order to keep TikTok running in the US for a further 90 days, while his administration worked to make a deal to bring the app under American ownership.
It marked the third deadline extension, and came after the Supreme Court upheld a law banning TikTok in January – causing the platform to breifly go dark.
TikTok is owned by Bytedance, and boasts around 170 million users in the US.
The Supreme Court said the ban was necessary to deal with the “well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary”.
The US is concerned vast swathes of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits could be obtained by the Chinese government.
Officials have also warned the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
TikTok, which sued the government last year over the law, has long denied it could be used as a tool of Beijing.
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