Why TikTok’s first week of American ownership was a disaster
App endured a major outage and user backlash over perceived censorship. Now it’s facing an inquiry by the California governor and an ascendant competitor
A little more than one week ago, TikTok stepped on to US shores as a naturalized citizen. Ever since, the video app has been fighting for its life.
TikTok’s calamitous emigration began on 22 January when its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized a deal to sell the app to a group of US investors, among them the business software giant Oracle. The app’s time under Chinese ownership had been marked by a meteoric ascent to more than a billion users, which left incumbents such as Instagram looking like the next Myspace. But TikTok’s short new life in the US has been less than auspicious.
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The U.S. Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law a measure banning TikTok if it weren’t sold by its Chinese ownership. But now-President Donald Trump gave the service a reprieve, and a sale of its U.S. operations appears imminent.