Beijing Bytedance Technology Co Ltd

Subterms

    Latest story

    188 Shares195 Views

    JD Vance Is in Charge of Getting a TikTok Deal. Can He Find a Buyer?

    by

    The vice president is in a tricky position as he looks for a deal to save the popular short-form video app, which is subject to being banned in the U.S. if it is not sold to a non-Chinese owner.Last week, an aide for Vice President JD Vance reached out to the billionaire Frank McCourt.The topic at hand was Mr. McCourt’s $20 billion long-shot offer to buy TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app. Mr. Vance’s aide wanted details about the bid, which was one of several public overtures for the app, according to two people familiar with the process.The inquiry was one of Mr. Vance’s earliest moves toward corralling a deal for the popular app after President Trump tapped him earlier this month to find an arrangement to save it. TikTok was recently banned in the United States under a new federal law that prohibited distribution in the country if it was not sold to a non-Chinese owner, though Mr. Trump delayed enforcement of the law until early April.Mr. Trump’s assignment plunges Mr. Vance into a fraught geopolitical and corporate negotiation over the fate of the app, which counts some 170 million American users. It is not clear who could buy TikTok in the United States, or even whether China or ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, would allow a sale. And the Trump administration is under scrutiny for its decision to disregard the law’s Jan. 19 deadline for a sale or a ban. Mr. Vance’s involvement ensures that he and Mr. Trump — both of whom once supported banning TikTok because of national security concerns — have some public accountability for saving it, according to analysts and people involved in negotiations for a sale. Tapping Mr. Vance could also help lend negotiations more credibility, said Peter Harrell, a former Biden White House official who worked on national security, tech and economic issues.“What he brings to the role is everybody’s going to take his call and take him seriously,” Mr. Harrell said. “Most people, given Trump has been pretty clear he’s tapped Vance for this, will assume that Vance is speaking for the president.”An electronic billboard for TikTok in Times Square. Mr. Vance’s involvement adds some credibility to the White House’s efforts to find new owner for TikTok.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares98 Views

      in Elections

      Apple and Google Restore TikTok to App Stores in the U.S.

      by

      The popular social media app was removed to comply with a new law that banned it in the United States.Apple and Google restored TikTok to their app stores in the United States on Thursday evening, several weeks after they removed the short-form video platform in compliance with a new law that banned it in the country.President Trump tried to pause enforcement of the TikTok ban with an executive order, but the companies were reluctant to bring TikTok back until they were certain they were not breaking the law.The law, signed last year, had called for ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner by Jan. 19. The law targeted app store operators and internet hosting companies with steep financial penalties if they distributed or maintained TikTok.Mr. Trump’s executive order prompted confusion among technology companies. While Apple and Google kept TikTok out of their app stores, companies like Oracle, which provided back-end technology support for the app, resumed working with it after a brief shutdown in January.While Apple and Google blocked new downloads of TikTok, the app was largely unaffected if it was already downloaded on American phones. TikTok claims 170 million U.S. users.The return of the app to the stores is a positive sign for TikTok, which now has until early April to find a buyer. It’s also a remarkable turnabout for the company. Just a month ago, it was facing down a ban with wide bipartisan support in Congress. The law was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court — only to be upended by Mr. Trump.TikTok executives told video creators in a briefing call on Tuesday that it was optimistic that Apple and Google would soon reinstate the app, said H. Lee Justine, a TikTok creator and author, who was on the call.“They said that the administration had given them a lot of information that they wouldn’t be penalized and that they were really hopeful that any day now they would put it back in the app stores,” she said in an interview. “It makes me very hopeful that they felt that they could do this because hopefully this means that long term there’s not going to be issues and this will work out.”TikTok declined to comment on its return to the app stores or the briefing.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      U.S. Court Denies TikTok’s Request to Freeze Sale-or-Ban Law

      by

      TikTok had sought to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent to sell the app or face a U.S. ban next month. The case may now head to the Supreme Court.A federal court on Friday denied TikTok’s request to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent company to sell the app or face a ban in the United States as of Jan. 19, a decision that puts the fate of the app in the Supreme Court’s hands.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a filing late on Friday that an injunction was “unwarranted,” and that it had expedited its decision so that TikTok and its users could seek an emergency freeze from the Supreme Court.A week ago, three judges in the same court unanimously denied petitions from the company and its users to overturn the law. TikTok then asked the court on Monday to temporarily block the law until the Supreme Court decided on TikTok’s planned appeal of that decision, and sought a decision by Dec. 16.The court said on Friday that TikTok and its users “have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court.”It isn’t clear whether the Supreme Court will agree to temporarily freeze the law and hear the case, though experts say that is likely.Michael Hughes, a spokesman for TikTok, said, “As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech.” He said that American users’ voices would be “silenced” if the law were not stopped.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      TikTok Faces Lawsuits From 13 States Around Teens and Mental Health

      by

      More than a dozen states sued TikTok on Tuesday for creating an app designed to be addictive to children and teens.Thirteen states and the District of Columbia sued TikTok on Tuesday for creating an intentionally addictive app that harmed children and teens while making false claims to the public about its commitment to safety.In separate lawsuits, a bipartisan group of attorneys general cited internal company documents to paint a picture of a multibillion dollar company that knowingly contributed to a mental health crisis among American teenagers to maximize its advertising revenue. They said that TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has relentlessly designed features to prompt heavy, compulsive use of TikTok and that many children were using the app late at night when they would otherwise have been asleep.TikTok “knew the harms to children,” Rob Bonta, the Democratic attorney general of California, said in an interview. “They chose addiction and more use and more eyeballs and more mental and physical harm for our young people in order to get profits — it’s really that simple.”The lawsuits add to a rapidly expanding list of challenges for TikTok in the United States, which now counts 170 million monthly U.S. users. A federal law passed in April calls for the app to be banned in the United States as of January unless it is sold. A federal lawsuit against the company in August also claimed that TikTok allowed children to open accounts, gathered information about them and made it difficult for their parents to delete the accounts.TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The states, many of which started investigating the company’s harms to minors in early 2022, are generally claiming that TikTok’s conduct violates their consumer protection laws. The states say that TikTok plays videos in a manner that aims to make young users lose track of time and sends them round-the-clock notifications and ephemeral content like livestreams to compel them to keep checking in. The longer users stay on the app, the more targeted ads TikTok is able to show them.The attorneys general say that TikTok has misled users about its so-called 60-minute screen time limits for young people and other features that promise to curate the videos that they see.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      TikTok Expands its Election Resources Ahead of November

      by

      The company is an increasingly popular source of political news. It’s adding more content about how elections work and media literacy.TikTok is pushing to improve information about the upcoming U.S. presidential election on the app, it said Wednesday.The company will expand a landing page on how elections work and why they can be trusted and run new in-feed videos about media literacy. It will also increase security requirements for verified accounts from politicians and governments in the United States. Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald J. Trump and their vice-presidential nominees each have TikTok accounts as of two weeks ago, a sharp pivot from last year, when the vast majority of American politicians were avoiding the app.TikTokTikTokThe efforts come as TikTok warily acknowledges that it has become a much bigger news source for millions of Americans ahead of the presidential election than it was in 2020. It joins other major tech companies like Meta, Google and X that must regularly grapple with how their platforms handle election-related content. But TikTok has an added layer of scrutiny, since it is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance and faces a looming possibility that its app could be banned as soon as January, based on national security concerns.“Young people are going to TikTok and other vertical video platforms for news more than ever,” said Alex Mahadevan, the director of MediaWise at the Poynter Institute, which worked with TikTok to create a series of videos on media literacy that will soon begin airing to users. “As of late, TikTok has been investing a lot in media literacy and fact-checking.”The U.S. government has expressed some concern that TikTok could imperil future elections. The Justice Department said in July that China could direct ByteDance and TikTok to manipulate videos served to Americans to “undermine trust in our democracy and exacerbate social divisions.” President Biden signed a landmark law in April that will ban TikTok in the U.S. in January unless ByteDance sells the app to a non-Chinese company.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Nepal Lifts Ban on TikTok, in a Likely Overture to China

      by

      The move signaled that Nepal’s new prime minister, who has cultivated ties with China, would continue on that path.The new prime minister of Nepal, K.P. Sharma Oli, on Thursday overturned a ban on TikTok that his predecessor imposed in November, an apparent sign that the veteran politician intended to strengthen the country’s relations with China, its northern neighbor.The popular social media app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, was banned for its refusal to curb what the previous Nepalese government had described as hate speech that disturbed “social harmony.” At the time, Nepali officials said that they had resorted to the ban after TikTok declined to address concerns about troubling content.TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.The decision to reinstate TikTok signaled Mr. Oli’s belief that, amid the geopolitical bickering between China and India, Nepal’s neighbor to the south that also banned the app, the Himalayan country was better off aligning with China.TikTok and many other Chinese apps have been banned in India since 2020, amid historically fraught relations between the two countries and more recent efforts to dominate the South Asian region.Prithvi Subba Gurung, a Nepalese government spokesman, said TikTok would now have to abide by certain directives, such as naming a point of contact in the country.“We have set a few conditions such as TikTok to be used for promoting Nepali tourism, supporting us for digital safety, digital literacy and digital education and curb hate content,” Mr. Gurung said.On Thursday morning, the Chinese ambassador to Nepal, Chen Song, wrote on the social media platform X, “Today is a good day,” which many Nepalese took to mean that the talks to reinstate TikTok had been finalized.Mr. Oli, 73, who leads Nepal’s largest communist party, returned to power in July as the leader of a new ruling coalition, taking charge of the government for the fourth time. The previous leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, was seen as easier than Mr. Oli for India to manipulate and frequently changing coalition partners for his personal benefit.Mr. Oli has made no secret of his opposition to India’s influence in Nepal. During his first stint as prime minister in 2015, he stood up against a crippling economic blockade that India had imposed over certain provisions in Nepal’s Constitution.During his second stint as prime minister, after elections in 2017, Mr. Oli revised Nepal’s political map in a way that further soured relations with India.On Thursday, Nepal and China also agreed to expand a few development projects aimed at strengthening bilateral ties, including an agreement to complete the upgrade of a highway in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative project. Anupreeta Das More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Taiwan, on China’s Doorstep, Is Dealing With TikTok Its Own Way

      by

      The island democracy was early to ban TikTok on government phones, and the ruling party refuses to use it. But a U.S.-style ban is not under consideration.As it is in the United States, TikTok is popular in Taiwan, used by a quarter of the island’s 23 million residents.People post videos of themselves shopping for trendy clothes, dressing up as video game characters and playing pranks on their roommates. Influencers share their choreographed dances and debate whether the sticky rice dumplings are better in Taiwan’s north or south.Taiwanese users of TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance, are also served the kind of pro-China content that the U.S. Congress cited as a reason it passed a law that could result in a ban of TikTok in America.One recent example is a video showing a Republican congressman, Rob Wittman of Virginia, stoking fears that a vote for the ruling party in Taiwan’s January election would prompt a flood of American weapons to aid the island democracy in a possible conflict with China, which claims it as part of its territory. The video was flagged as fake by a fact-checking organization, and TikTok took it down.About 80 miles from China’s coast, Taiwan is particularly exposed to the possibility of TikTok’s being used as a source of geopolitical propaganda. Taiwan has been bombarded with digital disinformation for decades, much of it traced back to China.But unlike Congress, the government in Taiwan is not contemplating legislation that could end in a ban of TikTok.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Pro-Trump PAC Joins TikTok Amid Fight Over Its Chinese Ownership

      by

      The main political action committee backing former President Donald J. Trump joined TikTok on Wednesday, jumping onto the popular social media platform while it is at the center of a political battle over its ownership by a Chinese corporation, ByteDance.The super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., is independent of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, but the move to TikTok — using the handle @MAGA — signals a shift in strategy nearly three months after President Biden’s re-election campaign joined the social media platform.“There’s millions of voters on TikTok, and @MAGA will deliver President Donald J. Trump’s pro-freedom, pro-America agenda every day with the facts and stories that matter,” Taylor Budowich, the chief executive of the PAC, said in a statement. “We aren’t trying to set policy, we are trying to win an election.”The TikTok account, which had about 300 followers as of Wednesday evening, has posted five videos so far, four attacking Mr. Biden and one attacking Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, as a “radical leftist.”Mr. Biden signed a law in April that would force a sale of TikTok by ByteDance, which sued the federal government on Tuesday in an effort to block the law. Under the terms of the law, ByteDance has about nine months to sell the app or it will be banned in the United States. The president can extend that time frame to a year.Mr. Trump had also tried to ban the app during his term, ordering ByteDance in August 2020 to divest the app. A federal judge blocked the attempted ban the next month, and Mr. Trump left office a few months later.But when House Republicans moved to force the sale of the app via legislation, Mr. Trump came out against the bill, saying that ByteDance’s ownership was still a national security threat but that a potential ban would anger young Americans.“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on CNBC. “There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it.”Mr. Trump himself is not on TikTok — preferring to use his own social media site, Truth Social — and neither is his campaign. With TikTok still operating in the United States, for now, and with Mr. Biden’s campaign using the app, Mr. Budowich said that Mr. Trump’s message should be “brought to every corner of the internet.”“We will not cede any platform to Joe Biden and the Democrats,” he said. More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Congress Passed a Bill That Could Ban TikTok. Now Comes the Hard Part.

      by

      After President Biden signs the bill to force a sale of the video app or ban it, the legislation will face court challenges, a shortage of qualified buyers and Beijing’s hostility.A bill that would force a sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner, ByteDance — or ban it outright — was passed by the Senate on Tuesday and is expected to be signed quickly into law by President Biden.Now the process is likely to get even more complicated.Congress passed the measure citing national security concerns because of TikTok’s Chinese ties. Both lawmakers and security experts have said there are risks that the Chinese government could lean on ByteDance for access to sensitive data belonging to its 170 million U.S. users or to spread propaganda.The proposed law would allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States if ByteDance sold it within 270 days, or about nine months, a time frame that the president could extend to a year.The measure is likely to face legal challenges, as well as possible resistance from Beijing, which could block the sale or export of the technology. It’s also unclear who has the resources to buy TikTok, since it will carry a hefty price tag.The issue could take months or even years to settle, during which the app would probably continue to function for U.S. consumers.“It’s going to be a royal mess,” said Anupam Chander, a visiting scholar at the Institute for Rebooting Social Media at Harvard and an expert on the global regulation of new technologies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More