OAN Staff Abril Elfi
4:56 PM – Tuesday, January 28, 2025
President Donald Trump has announced that Microsoft is in talks to buy the TikTok app.
When asked by reporters whether the U.S. tech giant was preparing a bid, Trump replied: “I would say yes” – before adding that there was “great interest in TikTok” from several other companies as well.
This came after Trump signed an executive order to delay the Biden administration’s ban of the app, giving it a 75-day extension.
The Biden administration previously ordered China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok to a U.S. company. The app has around 170 million U.S.-based users.
The law was first signed by President Joe Biden on April 24th, 2024. It was known as the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” making it unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update a foreign adversary-controlled application.
The Biden administration’s concerns reportedly stem from the massive amount of data that the Chinese app gathers from its users, which could be utilized by the Chinese government to later “blackmail” U.S. citizens, nefariously using it to their advantage.
On the flip side, TikTok users and content creators have argued that the ban is “unconstitutional,” claiming it violates their “right to free speech” and expression.
“Rarely, if ever, has the court confronted a free-speech case that matters to so many people,” wrote lawyers representing TikTok content creators and users.
TikTok added that the potential ban “will silence the speech of applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts and other matters of public concern.”
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