Tuesday the Senate passed a bill containing a version of the TikTok divestment plan. President Biden signed it Wednesday so, as of now, ByteDance has nine months to find a buyer or face a national ban.
In reality, things won’t move so quickly. TikTok has already vowed to sue and the ACLU is in their corner. Just the legal part of this battle could take more than nine months and while that drags on the clock isn’t ticking. Still, it’s a dramatic turn for a company that counts roughly one out of every two people in the US as a user.
This morning Politico published an interesting account of how TikTok wound up in this position. Apparently it was a surprise. TikTok really believed that their congressional testimony last year had been a “tremendous success.”
“They thought it was a tremendous success,” said Jim Lewis, a tech expert and former diplomat. When he spoke with TikTok general…
