ByteDance to drop Tiktok’s U.S. sale and partners with Oracle

On Sunday, ByteDance announced that it would abandon TikTok’s United States sale to pursue a partnership deal with Oracle Corp. (ORCL.N).

The Chinese multinational internet technology company had been in discussions last month to divest TikTok’s U.S. business to Oracle.

ByteDance also had an alliance with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O) after the U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to shut down the short-video app in the United States.

The Trump administration cited a potential national security risk due to the vast amount of private data collected by TikTok.

TikTok, which has 100 Million U.S. users, said that it would not comply with any request to share such data with the Chinese government.

“User data protection and assurances around how the company’s algorithms push content to U.S. users are thoughtful components of a substantive solution, but whether they can change political outcomes is a much more difficult question,” U.S. Regulatory Lawyer John Kabealo said.