Plans by the Trump administration to force the sale of Chinese-owned video app TikTok to American investors have been halted by the Biden administration, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Biden administration has suspended the domestication of Tiktok over its ongoing review of its security risks.
According to the Wall Street Journal, unnamed sources disclosed that the current administration has put on hold the sale of the app indefinitely.
The United States government – under the Trump administration – had raised concerns over the collection of data of American citizens by the owners of the video app, ByteDance, stating that it would only allow its usage by Americans if it was owned by American investors.
However, the Biden administration is currently reviewing security concerns raised by the past administration over data mining by the Chinese company ByteDance.
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The Journal noted that the current administration was in no rush to force the sale of the app.
Although there has been no direct comment from the White House, Jan Psaki, a spokesperson said that “It’s not accurate to suggest that there is a new proactive step by the Biden White House.”
She added that there was an ongoing “rigorous” review of risks posed by the usage of the app by Americans.
Psaki added, “I will note broadly speaking that we are comprehensively evaluating the risks… to US data including from TikTok and will address them in a decisive and effective fashion.”
The US alone accounts for 100 million TikTok users, with the creators of the app fending off allegations that it was mining data of American users, storing information on servers in both the US and Singapore.
The plan of the Trump administration was to make Oracle a tech partner of TikTok, making it a major stakeholder, in a bid to gain some control over access to data of American users.
