The US government on Wednesday granted ByteDance a new week-long extension of an order directing the Chinese company to sell its TikTok short video-sharing app, according to a court filing.
ByteDance has previously, been granted a 15-day extension of the order issued in August, which was set to expire Friday. President Donald Trump on Aug. 14 had directed ByteDance to divest the app within 90 days.
To avert the ban, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalize a deal with Walmart Inc. and Oracle Corp. to shift TikTok’s U.S. assets into a new entity.
The tech establishment has been under pressure, and only got a relief when the deadline was shifted a week till the 4th of December, 2020.
ByteDance made the proposal after disclosing on Nov. 10 that it had submitted four prior proposals including one in November that sought to address U.S. concerns by “Creating a new entity, wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing U.S. investors in ByteDance, that would be responsible for handling TikTok’s U.S. user data and content moderation.“
A Commerce Department ban on Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google offering TikTok for download for new U.S. users that had been set to take effect on Sept. 27, has also been blocked.