TikTok has until April 5th to avoid US ban: What to know

00:00 Speaker A

TikTok nearing the April 5th deadline for parent company ByteDance to sell the social media platform in order to prevent a ban in the US.
Yahoo finances Dan Howley joins us now with the very latest. Dan.

00:18 Dan Howley

Yeah, Josh, this is, uh, the second time that the company has been up for a ban. Uh, the first time back in, uh, January just before the inauguration when it temporarily went offline on June 18th, then came back online, uh, shortly afterwards on June 19th, and then we had, uh, Trump signed that executive order extending the deadline for the ban till April 5th. And now that date is quickly approaching, there’s, uh, reportedly a number of suitors that are looking to buy TikTok, uh, including Oracle. And that’s according to the information in Bloomberg. Uh, the issue here though, is does it get buy-in from China? Uh, do they say, sure, you know, go ahead with this deal or, or not? Uh, Trump has floated the idea of easing tariffs if China agrees to sell, uh, or agrees to allow ByteDance to sell TikTok. A lot of this, uh, you know, value that TikTok has is obviously its users, uh, but it’s algorithm as well, which keeps people scrolling and, you know, swiping and swiping and swiping because, uh, it keeps them hooked over time. And so there’s a lot going on here when it comes to the ban itself. Uh, and, frankly, there’s, there’s a lot of wiggle room. Uh, there’s the idea that perhaps President Trump can see a kind of change of hands and say that it satisfies the terms of the ban or, or of the, the law. Uh, you know, this really isn’t necessarily a ban on TikTok itself. What it does is it outlaws, uh, cloud providers as well as App Store owners like Google and Apple from hosting the app past the deadline. If they don’t, then they’re fined, and that means that TikTok basically goes offline, and that’s what happened previously. But April 5th is fast approaching, uh, and President Trump says that we’ll likely see some kind of sale or, or action beforehand.

03:15 Speaker A

Could Trump do another extension, Dan?

03:35 Dan Howley

Yeah, I mean, he could. There’s, there’s still a lot of questions around that and what that might mean. Uh, but we could end up seeing this extended again. Yeah.

04:02 Speaker A

All right, Dan. Thank you. Appreciate it.