President Donald Trump has for a third time extended the deadline that would have required TikTok to be sold or face a ban in the US.
A bipartisan law passed by Congress last year mandates TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sell the app.
The platform ‘went dark’ for a day in January after the law took effect, until Trump intervened issuing consecutive 75-day postponements, and now a 90 day extension until September.
The US government has said TikTok poses a threat to national security because Chinese authorities might access its vast trove of user data, which Beijing denies.
Trump once supported a ban, but changed his position in part because of the role he believes it played in his second election victory: “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points”, he said in December.
But a key Democrat lawmaker has criticised continued postponements.
Senator Mark Warner accused Trump of “flouting the law and ignoring its own national security findings about the risks posed by a PRC [People’s Republic of China] controlled TikTok”.
If there is no deal, will TikTok be banned?
If no deal is reached by 17 September, the app could once again face a US ban and be pulled from app stores.
And the executive orders extending the time to find a buyer do not overturn the sell-or-ban law passed by Congress and upheld by the US Supreme Court.
So a ban remains at least a legal possibility.