TikTok

ByteDance in January cut its Indian workforce after New Delhi decided to retain a ban on its popular video app TikTok, first prohibited last year following a border clash between India and China. The authorities also directed Citibank and HSBC to prevent ByteDance India from withdrawing funds from any other bank accounts linked to its tax identification number, the first source said.

The move was widely linked to India's broader pushback against Chinese businesses after clashes at a disputed Himalayan border site left 20 Indian soldiers dead.

Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into the accidental death of a 10-year-old girl who allegedly took part in a "blackout challenge" on the video-sharing network TikTok.

TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, said on Friday it had not managed to identify any content on its site that could have encouraged the girl to participate in any such challenge, but was helping the authorities in the probe over possible "incitement to suicide".

Medical experts have warned about the danger of the challenge being taken up by some young people, who refer to it as "scarfing" or "the choking game" in which restricted oxygen to the brain results in a high.

Russian authorities are warning social networks, especially the video platform TikTok, popular with young people, to stop advertising for jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

"We request that you immediately take comprehensive measures to prevent the dissemination of such unlawful information on the TikTok platform," reads a statement from telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor.

Specifically, the authority refers to calls disseminated via TikTok to participate in a demonstration for Kremlin critic Navalny that had been announced for Saturday but had not been approved.

Federal Judge Carl Nichols has decided that the U.S. Department of Commerce has no sufficient legal basis for prohibiting ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, from holding infrastructure and data for the operation of the social media application in the United States.

The Trump administration used as a basis for its action a 1977 law granting the U.S. president broad emergency powers in the event of extraordinary dangers from abroad. However, this provision expressly prohibits the president from restricting the import and export of information or information material or personal communications. TikTok clearly falls into this category, Judge Nichols now stressed.

TikTok will now have two more weeks, until Nov. 27, to reach an agreement with Oracle and Walmart and persuade the U.S. government to approve the proposed deal, a court filing on Friday showed. The company said on Tuesday that it requested an extension of 30 days to complete the sale but had not heard from the government for weeks.

Last October, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which investigates the national security risks of certain business deals, began examining ByteDance's 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, a Chinese-owned lip-syncing app that became a hit among teens in the U.S. and would be relaunched as TikTok. The review came at the urging of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin raising fears about political censorship and the possibility that the Chinese Communist Party could use the app to advance its foreign policy agenda.

TikTok has filed a petition in a US Court of Appeals calling for a review of actions by the Trump administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFUIS). The reason, according to the company, is that it hasn’t heard from the committee in weeks about an imminent deadline for parent company ByteDance to sell off US assets over national security concerns.

Pakistan officials announced Friday a ban on TikTok after receiving complaints of "immoral and indecent" content on the popular video-sharing app.

In a press release, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority stated that given a "number of complaints from different segments of the society against immoral/indecent content on the video sharing application TikTok, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has issued instructions for blocking of the application."

Reuters quotes an official involved in the decision: "We have been asking them repeatedly to put in place an effective mechanism for blocking immoral and indecent content."

The U.S. Commerce Department on Saturday announced a one-week delay until September 27 on order to remove TikTok app from mobile application stores owned by Apple and Google. The decision came after President Trump has given tentative approval to an Oracle-Wallmart deal that will keep TikTok alive in the country.

Trump said, on Saturday, that "I have given the deal my blessing, I approve the deal in concept."

TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, have filed a complaint in Washington federal court on Friday night, asking a judge to block the Trump administration's executive order that would block Chinese social-media networks, especially TikTok and WeChat, to do business with U.S. companies.

TikTok, which has over 100 million users in the United States, said the ban would "irreversibly destroy the TikTok business in the U.S."

Chinese-owned mobile apps TikTok and WeChat will be banned from all U.S. app stores, so the Trump administration on Friday. The ban, which will take effect on Sunday, will affect over 100 million people in the U.S. who are using the apps. The executive order prohibits any distribution or maintenance of TikTok and WeChat.

Further it will be illegal to host or transfer internet traffic associated with WeChat on Sunday and with TikTok on November 12. This means that WeChat will be shut down in the U.S. as of midnight Monday while TikTok will still function but can't be updated.

"As to TikTok, the only real change as of Sunday night will be users won’t have access to improved updated apps, upgraded apps or maintenance," so Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. "Today's actions prove once again that President Trump will do everything in his power to guarantee our national security and protect Americans from the threats of the Chinese Communist Party."

TikTok has declined to comment, so the New York Times. Oracle hasn't responded yet.

A revised term sheet by the United States Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchi has been accepted by Oracle and the TikTok owner Bytedance.

The approval of the United States and the Chinese governments are for the deal are still pending.

Oracle has confirmed that it has made a deal with ByteDance over a TikTok partnership, the company announced on Monday.

"Oracle confirms Secretary Mnuchin’s statement that it is part of the proposal submitted by ByteDance to the Treasury Department over the weekend in which Oracle will serve as the trusted technology provider," so Oracle in a statement.

"I will just say from our standpoint, we’ll need to make sure that the code is, one, secure, Americans’ data is secure, that the phones are secure and we’ll be looking to have discussions with Oracle over the next few days with our technical teams," so Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said that the government is planning to review the deal this week.

ByteDance has decided to partner with Oracle on TikTok's U.S. operations instead of selling the U.S. arm. According to Reuters, the partnership is supposed to help navigate "geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington, people familiar with the matter said."

With Microsoft announcing that the U.S. operations of TikTok won't be sold to the technology company, rumours have broken out that Oracle will be the winner of the bid for the TikTok U.S. operations.

The Chinese state broadcaster CGTN has now reported that the TikTok owner ByteDance will sell its U.S. operations to neither Microsoft nor Oracle. ByteDance themselves refused to comment.

Bytedance has decided to not sell TikTok's U.S. operations to Microsoft.

"ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft. We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users while protecting national security interests," so Microsoft in a statement on Sunday.

TikTok's CEO Kevin Mayer has resigned, less than four months after joining the company. His resignation comes after the video app has been put under pressure by the Trump administration over its ties to China.

Walmart is partnering with Microsoft to potentially buy TikTok's U.S. business from BtyeDance. The news was first reported by CNBC, which was later confirmed by Walmart.

In a statement, Walmart said that TikTok's integration of e-commerce and advertising "is a clear benefit to creators and users in those markets" and that the retailer believes "a potential relationship with TikTok US in partnership with Microsoft could add this key functionality and provide Walmart with an important way for us to reach and serve omnichannel customers as well as grow our third-party marketplace and advertising businesses."

TikTok sued the U.S. government Monday in response to what it said is a "heavily politicised" executive order signed by President Donald Trump that seeks to ban the video-app from operating in the country.

The suit, filed in the Federal District Court for the Central District of California, is the most direct challenge by TikTok to the Trump administration.

In a blog post, TikTok states "The key personnel responsible for TikTok, including its CEO, Global Chief Security Officer, and General Counsel, are all Americans based in the United States—and therefore are not subject to Chinese law. U.S. content moderation is likewise led by a U.S.-based team and operates independently from China, and, as noted above, the TikTok application stores U.S. user data on servers located in the United States and Singapore."

The United States President Donald Trump stated tech giant Oracle would be "a great company" to take over TikTok's US operations.

The President reaction comes days after media reported that Oracle would be a possible buyer of the TikTok in North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Trump ordered TikTok's owner ByteDance to sell their US business within 90 days or face being shut down by the government.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Oracle is working with Sequoia Capital and General Atlantic, investors that already have stakes in ByteDance.

Reuters reports that, from 2018 to mid-2020, ByteDance censored content in its BaBe app in Indonesia. According to Reuters sources, local moderators were instructed to remove content perceived as critical of the Chinese government.

Articles with references to 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, or to Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China, were among those taken down.

In a statement, BaBe disagreed with the claims: "A cursory search on the BaBe app shows numerous articles and videos that highlight the type of content these claims say we would remove."

ByteDante has previously faced criticism as TikTok, one of their applications, has been criticizes for its alleged data harvesting on behalf of the Chinese state.