TikTok is reportedly working on developing a separate app just for the US market, in order to comply with the country’s legislation requiring it to either sell its business in the US or face a ban.
The new app is allegedly going to be released on September 5, and US TikTok users will have to switch to it in order to continue using the service. The ‘old’ app, the one currently in use, will be removed from US app stores when the new one launches and will then stop working entirely around next March. Obviously, if this pans out there will be plenty of notices in the existing app telling people to switch before that deadline.
It’s very much unclear how this is connected to the US government’s repeated threats to ban TikTok unless it’s sold. The report says there’s a connection, but doesn’t go into any more details.
In the meantime, US President Trump has announced that a “group of very wealthy people” is going to buy TikTok’s US operations from ByteDance, the Chinese company which owns the platform. We still don’t know who these people are, but Trump promised that will change later this month. The deal will most likely require some sort of approval from the Chinese government, since ByteDance is based over there. Whether that will be forthcoming is anyone’s guess.