It seems like the Trump administration forgot about that whole TikTok ban thing

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Remember when Donald Trump waged war on TikTok? It seems like a lifetime ago, but it’s only been a couple of months. A bunch of things happened, but eventually, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) gave a deadline of November 12 for TikTok, and parent company ByteDance, to divest resources and create a new company that would control the social platform.

Now, it seems that with the current election things that are going on, the Trump administration has kind of, uhh, forgotten about the TikTok ban? This information comes from The Verge, who reports that TikTok applied for a 30-day extension but has yet to hear back from CFIUS, or really anybody.

So, what happens if the November 12 deadline passes? Well, no one really knows at this time. In a statement to The Verge, TikTok notes, “In the nearly two months since the President gave his preliminary approval to our proposal to satisfy those concerns, we have offered detailed solutions to finalize that agreement – but have received no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework.”

TikTok goes on to say:

Facing continual new requests and no clarity on whether our proposed solutions would be accepted, we requested the 30-day extension that is expressly permitted in the August 14 order. Today, with the November 12 CFIUS deadline imminent and without an extension in hand, we have no choice but to file a petition in court to defend our rights and those of our more than 1,500 employees in the US. We remain committed to working with the Administration — as we have all along — to resolve the issues it has raised, but our legal challenge today is a protection to ensure these discussions can take place.

Here’s the thing, if the Trump administration was really looking to ban the app for “national security concerns” and not for all the people that trolled his Tulsa rally, then why, now, is it not a priority all of a sudden? The answer is quite simple – it was never about national security and all about personal ego.

https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1327156978540564480

What do you think? Are you surprised by this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Snapchat adds a new music feature in a feeble attempt to compete with TikTok
• TikTok is now the second-most popular social app in the US, overtaking Instagram
• If you absolutely need to, Instagram will let you go live for up to four hours
• Facebook gained a bunch of users during COVID-19, but now people are leaving

Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.