In just two days, the news is changeable and ups and downs. The fate of tiktok America is shrouded in a cloud of shadows. Is it forced to sell to American giants or to accept a complete ban. Byte hopping is nervously waiting for the trump administration's final decision, and the already confirmed sale has been forced to stop.

On the morning of Friday, July 31, US Eastern time, according to the news agency, the,The White House may issue an executive order as soon as Saturday to pressure byte jump to sell tiktok's U.S. business on national security grounds, or it may block the app.

U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed the news to the media before leaving for Florida, saying

A number of U.S. media outlets later announced,Microsoft and byte hop are discussing the acquisition of tiktok, which may be taken over by Microsoft.

Obviously, byte skipping has already known the attitude of the US government in advance and is already preparing for tiktok's us way out. According to people familiar with the matter, the White House has been actively promoting the sale of tiktok's U.S. business in the past few weeks, making it clear that it wants a U.S. company to hold the business.

But on Friday night, on his way back to Washington from Florida, Trump said he would soon sign an executive order to block TikTok business in the United States.

He specifically stressed that he was inclined to completely block TikTok, and was fully entitled to do so. Surprisingly, Trump also made it clear that he did not support a U.S. company buying TikTok U.S. business.

According to U.S. media reports on Saturday, Aug .1, Microsoft and byte beat suspended acquisition negotiations because Trump explicitly opposed TikTok U.S. company's acquisition of U.S. business. According to reports, the two sides' previous negotiations have entered a deep stage. Trump's remarks surprised both sides. Microsoft and byte beat therefore decided to suspend negotiations, further waiting for the official position to be clear, can not rule out the possibility of the United States government to take tough measures.

Last year, we started to plan for a ban

Is this the U.S. government trying to get, or is it determined to kill all? however,TikTok the fate of America is not in its own hands. In front of the superpower's national machinery, any Internet company is powerless. If byte beats can be sold TikTok U.S. business at a reasonable price is also unknown.

The campaign against tiktok began last year. Some Republican congressmen in the United States have called on the trump administration to consider the national security risks of tiktok, believing that China may obtain the information of American users through tiktok.

Although the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have great differences on other domestic issues, they have similar positions on the issue concerning tiktok, and the Democratic parliamentary leaders have no objection to conducting a national security risk investigation on tiktok.

At the end of last year, the Committee on foreign investment in the United States, which is responsible for reviewing foreign businesses, began to investigate tiktok. Because byte beat spent $1 billion on acquisition in 2017 Musical.ly The deal was not approved by the Committee on foreign investment at the time Musical.ly There are tens of millions of users in the United States, which were later incorporated into tiktok.

A warm-up campaign to ban tiktok has already begun: at the end of last year, the Pentagon asked military personnel to remove the tiktok app; and this month, the US Congress passed a bill stipulating that government employees should not install the application on their work phones. In addition, big U.S. companies such as Wells Fargo have asked employees to unload tiktok from their work phones. At the end of June, U.S. Secretary of state pompio publicly said that tiktok was under consideration.

In fact, byte skipping has long foreseen the political risk of tiktok, and has carried out a lot of layout ahead of time. TikTok and jitter are twins, but they are two tiktok applications. The management of tiktok has also constantly said that its server is located in Singapore, and user data will never be transmitted back to China, let alone receive any command for data.

Withdrawal from the United States is unacceptable

After the obvious deterioration of the regulatory environment in the United States, byte hop has devoted a lot of energy to lobbying this year: to recruit Kevin Meyer, a Disney executive, as tiktok As a CEO, he used senior US officials to deal with US policies; he announced that he would completely reject political advertisements and never interfere in US elections; he invested heavily in the establishment of a lobbying team in Washington, including Republican dignitaries and trump friends; and announced the establishment of tiktok global headquarters overseas to create jobs in the United States.

However, these actions have not worked and cannot change the US government's skepticism about the Chinese holding of tiktok. Last year, the White House, for the same national security reasons, forced wanwei Kunlun to sell Grindr, a gay dating website it acquired in 2016, fearing that China would obtain personal data of homosexual netizens in the United States. In March, Kunlun eventually sold its main stake in Grindr to an American company for $600 million.

According to Reuters, under the White House's ultimatum to ban or not sell, byte hopping yesterday agreed to divest tiktok's U.S. business, which will be taken over by US Internet giant Microsoft to protect tiktok's data. Byte hopping initially tried to retain a minority stake in tiktok, but the idea was also rejected by the White House. The attitude of the U.S. government is very clear, and Chinese investment must completely withdraw from tiktok's US business. However, U.S. investors with byte jitters are likely to retain some of tiktok's shares.

It is no exaggeration to say that tiktok is the most successful Chinese mobile Internet application in international development so far. According to data report, tiktok currently has 800 million live users in 155 markets around the world. In terms of monthly live users, tiktok ranks seventh in the world, second only to Facebook, youtube, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, wechat and instagram, and even more than QQ, twitter and snapchat.

But withdrawing from the US market is an unacceptable option. Tiktok has about 40 million active users in the United States, which is the most valuable user group; moreover, the American entertainment stars and many star bloggers on tiktok are the core competitiveness of this platform. What is more serious is that the Indian government has previously banned tiktok on the ground of national security, resulting in the loss of 120 million active users of tiktok. If it is completely blocked by the U.S. government, it is likely that other European and American countries will follow suit. Then the valuation and attractiveness of this platform may lose more than half.

Microsoft holding can guarantee safety

Byte hopping obviously did the risk assessment of tiktok's being blocked before it finally agreed to sell tiktok's equity. Although the U.S. government has never had a history of directly blocking an app or website, the white house does have the right to take action on foreign companies' operations in the United States in the course of an investigation (which means no concrete evidence is required) on national security grounds.

Specific measures that the U.S. government can take include (but are not limited to): directly closing tiktok offices in the United States in the name of investigation, requiring apple and Google App Stores to take tiktok off the shelves; listing tiktok on the list of entities of the Ministry of Commerce, prohibiting US companies from doing business with them; prohibiting US advertisers from advertising in tiktok, and even prohibiting financial institutions from providing services for tiktok.

If the byte skipping continues to hold tiktok, it is difficult for the lawsuit to succeed after being blocked. It is almost impossible for us federal courts to intervene in the federal government's actions to block foreign enterprises on the grounds of national security. In March last year, Huawei, China, also sued the U.S. government, saying that the defense authorization act had violated the U.S. Constitution by blocking Huawei's products and services. As a result, it was directly rejected without accident. Previous litigation failure preceded by Russian anti-virus software Kaspersky.

But if Microsoft buys tiktok's U.S. business, it means that the app becomes an asset for U.S. companies. If the U.S. government wants to take appeal action again, it needs to provide clear evidence of violation, otherwise Microsoft can appeal to the government, because it violates the bill of rights of the US Constitution, that is, the government can not convict without trial and deprive the accused of the legitimate rights.

For them, it's also a bold acquisition of the social computing giant tok in the field of productivity. In 2016, Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. But nearly half of tiktok's users are teenagers, and the corporate culture and user groups seem to be significantly different from other Microsoft products and services. It is also unknown what kind of development prospects tiktok will have after entering Microsoft.

Is trump holding a grudge?

Today is Saturday, Trump goes to the golf course as usual to relax. But Microsoft and the byte beat are nervously waiting for the White House to take a step further. The White House spokesman said,

Thanks to the president's support for a total ban, some of tiktok's star bloggers this morning began to bid farewell to their fans and moved to other social platforms such as instagram. Although Facebook is unlikely to buy tiktok America for antitrust reasons, Facebook and snapchat will clearly be the biggest beneficiaries if tiktok is blocked.

Tiktok, the United States is still in the final self-help operation. This morning, the general manager of tiktok in the United States publicly said that tiktok would not leave the United States and would create a safe social product. Tiktok also announced that it planned to continue to invest in the United States and create 10000 jobs in the United States in the next three years. But whether this statement can change the White House's attitude towards tiktok is completely unknown.

At least one thing is for sure. Trump does not like tiktok very much. In order to avoid political risks, tiktok announced early that it would refuse all political advertisements and would not interfere in the US election. However, tiktok could not prevent the user organizations on the platform from opposing Trump's activities. This also makes tiktok helpless to offend trump.

On June 20, trump resumed his re-election campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As the epidemic prevention and control work was extremely poor, anti discrimination demonstrations broke out all over the country, and his re-election campaign suffered a heavy blow, obviously lagging behind Biden in a number of swing states. As a result, trump values Tulsa's campaign. His campaign triumphantly declared that nearly a million people had signed up for the rally, indicating that the people still supported the president.

But on the day of the rally, only more than 6000 people came to the scene, and the stadium of tens of thousands of people appeared empty. Trump was surprised and disappointed by the desolation, and was ridiculed by social media and mainstream media. According to media reports afterwards, many teenagers organized sabotage activities on the tiktok platform and reserved a large number of tickets for Trump's re-election rally with false names, creating the false appearance of a large number of registered participants to confuse the trump camp.

How much impact this incident has had on trump is unknown to the outside world. But in the past month, the White House has been exerting pressure to pre empt tiktok. Just after byte skipping was forced to agree to sell tiktok's U.S. business to Microsoft, Trump's wish to completely ban tiktok came out.

Is trump really going to wipe out tiktok in the U.S., or is he planning to do it again by forcing bytes to jump and sell tiktok at a jump price?