Oracle has held preliminary talks with ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to take over the activities of the social media sensation in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Financial Times reported late Monday. Microsoft is also in talks to buy ByteDance's TikTok app.
TikTok is an extremely popular social media app where people, mostly teenagers and young adults, post short videos that are often synced to music. But it has been scrutinized more and more closely in recent months. US lawmakers have accused it of being a threat to national security.
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The U.S. Army and Navy have banned the app from government equipment, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice are reportedly affected Investigating allegations that TikTok failed to meet its obligation to protect children's privacy.
US President Donald Trump issued a second executive order on Friday regarding the short video app, which gives Chinese parent company ByteDance 90 days to finalize a deal to sell the US arm of TikTok.
The app grew in popularity in the first quarter of the year, recording more than 2 billion downloads from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, the analysis firm Sensor Tower reported in April.
The app has recently become a vehicle for political activism. After President Donald Trump's official Twitter account invited supporters to request tickets to a June 11 rally in Oklahoma, K-Pop fan accounts encouraged their followers to sign up for the event and then not attend. TikTok videos with millions of views encouraged viewers to do the same.
Oracle and TikTok officials declined to comment.
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