TikTok ban on hold

WASHINGTON—TikTok will partner with Oracle and Walmart to form a U.S.-based company that serves the social media app’s roughly 100 million American users. President Donald Trump on Saturday said the deal had his “blessing” and his administration would delay a proposed ban on downloading or providing technical support for the app. TikTok and another China-based app, WeChat, raised concerns the Chinese government could collect user data about Americans from the platforms.

Do the apps pose a security risk? China has repeatedly denied gathering data on TikTok users, but experts say the communist government can request information from businesses based in the country at any time.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Stew on the debate over whether to ban TikTok.

Editor’s note: WORLD has updated this report since its original posting.