In April, President Joe Biden signed a law banning the social media application TikTok unless ByteDance, its Chinese-based parent company, sells its shares.
The clock is quickly ticking on the January 19, 2025, deadline for ByteDance to divest from the company or face a nationwide ban on the app. The legislation does provide the president, however, with a one-time extension of 90 days if there has been “significant progress” on the sale.
The company previously posted on Toutiao, its social media platform, that “ByteDance doesn’t have any plans to sell TikTok.”
ByteDance is busy fighting the legislation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is scheduled to hold oral arguments on September 16 on the company’s legal challenges against the law.
Business Insider reports on how, despite the looming deadline for ByteDance to divest, TikTok employees and ad buyers in the U.S. are acting as if nothing will change. Here’s the start of the story:
Remember TikTok?
Let’s make that more specific: Remember how the US government passed a law that says ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, has to find a new owner for its US operations or shut down?
That law still exists. And as of now, TikTok’s American arm is looking at a January 19, 2025 deadline before it has to go dark.
But inside the company, The Information reports, most US TikTok employees are behaving as if nothing is going to happen at all. They’re chasing ad sales and user growth, hosting events for creators, and looking to hire thousands of people.
TikTok employees aren’t the only ones acting like they’re not going anywhere. When I was at the Cannes advertising festival in June, I kept asking ad buyers what their fallback positions would be if TikTok went away in a few months. I got a series of shrugs in response. Not because they didn’t care, but because it didn’t seem likely.