With Joe Biden having seemingly defeated Donald Trump in the US Presidential Election and the latter refusing to concede, much of the country remains in limbo.
One company that is particularly caught up in the mess is TikTok, which is now questioning the President’s recent divestment order.
Back in August, Trump announced he would be “banning” TikTok. However, he quickly changed tune, instead ordering the company to divest its ownership in the United States.
TikTok soon revealed it had managed to strike a deal with Oracle and Walmart – which was approved by Trump – which would see the creation of a new US-based company named TikTok Global.
Under the proposed deal, the new company would be headquartered in the US and would control data collection and content moderation.
There had been some debate between ByteDance (the company that owns TikTok) and the US government over who would retain financial ownership over the new company.
However, TikTok this week revealed that in the two months since gaining Trump’s preliminary approval over the deal, it has “recieved no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework”.
After receiving radio silence from the Trump administration, TikTok revealed it had requested a 30-day extension to close the deal back on August 14, which was not granted.
The video sharing app says it now has “no choice” but to dispute the divestment orer in court.
“Today, with the November 12 CFIUS deadline imminent and without an extension in hand, we have no choice but to file a petition in court to defend our rights and those of our more than 1,500 employees in the US,” TikTok said in a statement.
TikTok has unsuccessfully filed two injunctions against the executive order already.
