Last year, China warned that a sale or divestiture of TikTok would involve exporting technology and would have to be approved by the government. Other Weibo users, however, likened TikTok facing a ban in the U.S. with Western apps including Facebook and X being unavailable in China. China has a say in any TikTok sale because it added content-recommendation algorithms, a secret sauce of TikTok’s success, to an export-control list in 2020 when the Trump administration was pushing for a sale of its U.S. operations. TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew has posted more frequently on his personal TikTok account, which has 3.8 million followers. In September, TikTok rolled out its e-commerce business, TikTok Shop, in the U.S. and has around 200,000 vendors.

Source: Wall Street Journal March 15, 2024 09:08 UTC