China-owned TikTok’s been living rent-free in many American lawmakers’ minds all year. Some lawmakers—who have been monitoring US tensions with China and coping with growing concerns that TikTok in its current form shouldn’t be trusted with millions of Americans’ data—reached a breaking point this December. In the past few weeks, many state and federal agencies introduced and passed various laws, campaigning hard to remove the popular short-video app from US devices.
It looks like the US could end up following through on Donald Trump’s thwarted 2020 plan to ban TikTok nationwide.
Possibly the only thing potentially keeping TikTok operating in the US has been an elusive deal that President Joe Biden’s administration is discussing with TikTok—a deal that just days ago, The New York Times reported, included terms that were “unlikely to satisfy anyone.” Now, Reuters has released an exclusive report, revealing new details about the terms of Biden’s deal and providing the first glimmer of hope for Americans increasingly worried that their TikTok access might soon be revoked.
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