The sell-off date for TikTok is ticking ever closer and now, it seems China has set some new rules that could stop the sale from potentially happening.
The Wall Street Journal reported that these rules are meant to limit the sharing technology advancements within international deals. Although ByteDane could sill go through with the sale of TikTok, there would be limitations on the back-end processes and algorithms that makes TikTok what it is.
These limitations would include “computing and data-processing technologies as text analysis, content recommendation, speech modeling and voice-recognition.”
These algorithms allow to have their clips to go viral with any clip. Rather than having all of a user’s clips get a high number of views across their accounts, while smaller users barely get anything, these algorithms allows anybody’s clips to viral. This gives users a legitimate hope that their videos could get high numbers, and not because they are simply popular.
What this means is, if the sale does go off without a hitch after these new imposed rules, then the TikTok the buyer would get wouldn’t be the same as it is now pre-sale. This could really throw a wrench into the mix.
According to Xinhua News Agency in China, a government trad adviser said that ByteDance should look over the export list and “seriously and cautiously” consider if they should be stopping sales negotiations.
What will happen with the sell-off closing in fast? Only time will tell at this point.
Source – Wall Street Journal and Social Media Today