TikTok has staved off a ban for as long as it can, but if something doesn't change by April 5, the ban will go into effect — and likely for longer than the few hours it was down earlier this month.
One way TikTok can avoid a total ban in the U.S. is for its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app. According to President Donald Trump, ByteDance is considering doing just that.
Per The Guardian, when a reporter aboard Air Force One on Monday asked if Microsoft was in talks to buy TikTok, Trump said, "I would say yes," adding that there is "a lot of interest in TikTok. There’s great interest in TikTok." BBC News reported that Trump said he'd like to see a "bidding war" over the sale.
There have been rumors that Microsoft might buy TikTok since 2020 when the company wrote in a blog post that it "prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States" after a conversation between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Trump.
This comes about a week after Trump signed an executive order delaying the TikTok ban for 75 days. Before the new April 5 deadline, Trump said he plans to "negotiate a resolution to avoid an abrupt shutdown of the TikTok platform while addressing national security concerns." The Microsoft talks might be part of that ongoing conversation.
