Byte cut meat can't live? TikTok will filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday at the earliest
Bytedance's response
According to new reports, TikTok will file a federal lawsuit as early as Tuesday challenging President Trump's executive order to block the video-sharing service in the United States. Meanwhile, Twitter and TikTok have held preliminary talks about a potential merger. Is Bytedance starting to get tough? TikTok is set to file a federal lawsuit as early as Tuesday challenging President Trump's executive order to block the video-sharing service in the United States, NPR reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Twitter and TikTok have held preliminary talks about a potential merger, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Go to the United States courts
Trump signed two executive orders barring U.S. individuals and companies from conducting any business transactions with TikTok's parent company, Bytedance, which will take effect in 45 days, starting September 20. According to the executive order, the Trump administration gave the "rationale" that TikTok had leaked a large amount of user information, and that the Chinese government might also have obtained a large amount of user location information, browsing history and search history from TikTok, which posed a national security threat to the United States. However, a recent assessment by the US Central Intelligence Agency and presented to the White House concluded that the Chinese government did not obtain user data from TikTok, a video app, according to the New York Times. Bytedance responded after Trump signed the executive order, issuing a statement saying the order did not follow due process and citing reports of unknown or unverified provenance. "If the U.S. government fails to provide fair treatment, the company will resort to U.S. courts," bytecode said.
TikTok's TikTok merger talks are about to kill Microsoft
The latest report says Twitter and TikTok have held preliminary talks about a potential merger. It is unclear whether Twitter will pursue a deal with TikTok's US business, after Weeks of talks between Microsoft and TikTok's parent company, Bytedance, and considered the frontrunner most likely to strike a deal. However, if a third party is killed halfway, will byte choose it? Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has also experimented with short videos, but hasn't had the same success as TikTok. Microsoft shut down the app in 2016 to cut costs. Twitter's market capitalisation of about $29bn is almost the same as TikTok's valuation of the assets to be divested, and much less than Microsoft's nearly $1.6tn. If Twitter does buy TikTok, it will certainly need to raise more money to fund the deal. Private equity firm Silver Lake is also an investor in Twitter and has expressed interest in funding a potential deal, according to the report. "Twitter will have a hard time raising enough money to buy TikTok's U.S. operations because it doesn't have enough lending capacity," said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan. Because Twitter is so much smaller, the SAN Francisco-based social media company believes it may not face the same level of antitrust scrutiny as Microsoft or other potential bidders. Still, Microsoft is the most likely buyer.
