Life After The TikTok Ban... Or Sale
JD Vance expects a "high-level" TikTok deal by the April 5 deadline... Because TikTok is good for the economy, and good for politics.
💬 Quick CONVERSATION STARTERS:
What’s TikTok’s future with Trump and JD Vance in charge?
In a recent interview with NBC News, US Vice President JD Vance said a deal to sell TikTok and keep it up and running in the United States would largely be in place by the April 5 deadline.
“There will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think satisfies our national security concerns, allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise,” Vance, whom President Donald Trump has asked to help broker the deal, said aboard Air Force Two.
ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, has not publicly confirmed negotiations with any potential US buyer, nor has it confirmed its willingness to sell TikTok to a US bidder.
The context around TikTok keeps evolving
VP Vance’s comments come just weeks ahead of the April 5 deadline requiring TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to divest from the popular video-sharing app or face a possible ban in the United States.
Trump said last week he will “probably” extend the deadline if a deal isn’t reached in time: “We have a lot of interest in TikTok. China is going to play a role, so hopefully China will approve of the deal. But they’re going to play a role.”
The deadline was set in Trump’s executive order in January, which gave ByteDance 75 days to divest from the US operations of TikTok amid national security concerns.
The law banning TikTok initially went into effect on January 19 — the day before Trump was sworn into his second term — causing the platform to go dark for a few hours.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said President Trump would like to hammer out a deal on TikTok’s future ownership under the current deadline, saying the president “doesn’t like to ask for extensions.”
“So, it’s in Donald Trump’s hands. He is going to make the decision how he wants to play it,” Lutnick said in an interview on Fox. “And you know Donald Trump. He wants to do it in the timeframe that he was given.”
Who wants to buy TikTok?
The leading contender at the moment seems to be tech billionaire Larry Ellison and his company Oracle — which already serves as TikTok’s key cloud-computing provider.
ByteDance wants Oracle to be a partner in a potential deal, according to The Information. Specifically, ByteDance would like Trump to sign off on a deal with a revived version of TikTok’s “Project Texas” — a previous effort by the company to convince Congress that it was not a national security threat by parking US user data on servers controlled by Oracle.
Public bids for TikTok include, according to media reports:
Project Liberty, led by former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, submitted a bid to ByteDance earlier this year. Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have also committed to the bid.
A consortium of investors, led by Employer.com founder and CEO Jesse Tinsley also submitted a bid to ByteDance earlier this year. James “Jimmy” Donaldson, more commonly known as MrBeast, is a part of the consortium.
US-based search engine Perplexity AI also placed a bid in January, proposing a merge.
Other rumored interested buyers:
Bobby Kotick, former CEO of video game company Activision.
Doug McMillion, Walmart CEO.
Microsoft, which expressed purchasing the platform with Walmart in 2020.
Video streaming platform Rumble.
At one point, Trump suggested Elon Musk, although the tech billionaire and Trump top advisor later said he’s not interested.
TikTok at SXSW
Unsurprisingly, TikTok was a topic of conversation at SXSW in Austin, Texas earlier this month. We were not at SXSW this year, instead we were on a trip to Italy to relax and take a break from tech, social media, and politics…
Anyway, according to a must-read SXSW recap by creator marketing rockstar
in , if you’re in media, marketing, or the creator space, among the conversations you need to be paying attention to right now are those surrounding TikTok, its future, and alternatives.“The looming TikTok ban was a recurring topic across multiple panels” at SXSW, Lia writes. “But don’t expect clear answers anytime soon. The reality is we’re all in limbo,” she added, quoting The Information’s Kaya Yurieff and tech policy expert Nu Wexler.
Substack — Lia explains — “kept coming up as an alternative” to TikTok.
The trend certainly rewards the most recent strategy by Substack co-founders
and in growing the platform by appealing to TikTok creators, as we highlighted in a recent newsletter.Is Substack The New Everything App?
We want to be a bit controversial, but Substack is indeed winning over audiences on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Can it grow into something more?
However, in her reporting from SXSW, Kaya Yurieff explains that “some TikTok creators are taking contingency measures,” pointing to alternatives like Instagram’s Reels.
The Daily Beast’s Alyson Krueger was also at SXSW. Reporting from an exclusive SXSW party co-hosted by Bluesky, the Onion, and Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty — the latter has submitted a bid for TikTok — at Outer Heaven in Austin, she said “the atmosphere was light and fun, but that didn’t stop partygoers from asking the serious, wonky question on most people’s mind: What in the world is happening with TikTok?”
According to The Daily Beast, McCourt’s team — who puts Project Liberty’s chances of acquiring the app at a 50/50 split — pointed out to a few possible scenarios:
“Trump keeps extending the deadline for TikTok’s sale. If the sale does not occur that would be illegal, and it could be up to the Supreme Court again to figure out how it will uphold its decision.”
“Trump does not keep extending the deadline, a sale must occur. Then it would be up to ByteDance to decide if it wants to do so or cease operations in the United States, cutting off TikTok’s 170 American million users from the app.”
“Trump sets a sale deadline and ByteDance agrees to sell.”
The myth about the TikTok ban and national security issues
This is a very interesting conversation between
ans on the origins of the TikTok ban… Thoughts?Ken refers to a recent article he wrote in February 2025, where he explains “The company’s ownership by China never was the driving force in Congress eventually taking action” on the TikTok ban.
He writes: “The ‘real story’ is pretty simple. Congress chose to take action essentially to suppress speech and protect Israel. The Biden administration hid behind China in its justification as to why a ban was essential.”
So what about national security and algorithm vulnerabilities?
If either Oracle or other bidders move forward with a deal to buy TikTok, you still have an algorithm controlled by a Chinese company — and potentially the Chinese government.
“If, for instance, the algorithm isn’t entirely rebuilt by its US owner or if TikTok’s Beijing-based parent firm ByteDance retains a role in its operations, it could retain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by the Chinese government,” POLITICO reports.
They add: “The data security company HaystackID, which serves as independent security inspectors for TikTok US, said in February that it has found no indications of internal or external malicious activity — nor has it identified any protected U.S. user data that has been shared with China.”
Is TikTok good for the economy?
In a not-so-subtle appeal to President Trump, TikTok has published a Oxford Economics report outlining the economic benefits that TikTok has delivered, with expanded data showing that TikTok exposure is connected to over 28 million American jobs.
“TikTok’s impact on the US economy continues to expand, with millions of small and mid-sized businesses using the platform to reach new customers, increase engagement, and create jobs. The latest Oxford Economics report underscores this growing influence, estimating that 28 million people are employed by businesses that leverage TikTok’s features. The platform isn’t just a tool for brand awareness—it’s a catalyst for real economic opportunity, fueling job growth and innovation across the country.”
— Blake Chandlee, President of Global Business Solutions at TikTok
Specifically, TikTok and Oxford Economics found that 4.7 million US jobs benefit from utilizing the platform. This includes:
More than 3.1 million jobs directly using TikTok in their work either by creating content for the platform or managing their accounts
Over 1.6 million workers indirectly benefiting from TikTok in areas like lead generation for sales teams, customer engagement for marketing, or product teams examining user feedback on the platform.
Interestingly, the report includes a state-by-state overview.
In the Nation’s Capital, where around 28,000 businesses use TikTok:
95% of SMBs in Washington, D.C. say their business’s sales increased after promoting their products and services on TikTok, and 80% say their business sold out of a product after promoting it on TikTok.
58% of SMBs in Washington, D.C. agree that their business needs to continue to use and improve upon TikTok marketing content in order to stay competitive.
69% have attracted a new investor or an additional investment through a TikTok interaction.
In California, perhaps the US state with the largest number of businesses on the platform, just shy of 1 million:
SMB’s use of TikTok in California in 2023 as an advertisement and marketing platform contributed $3.4 billion to GDP and generated around $820 million in federal, state, and local tax revenue in the state.
97% of SMBs in California say their business’s sales increased after promoting their products and services on TikTok, and 96% say their business sold out of a product after promoting it on TikTok.
In Texas, the second largest state for businesses active on TikTok at 725,000:
SMB’s use of TikTok in Texas as an advertisement and marketing platform contributed $2.2 billion to GDP in 2023 and generated around $430 million in federal, state, and local tax revenue in the state.
Thanks for including me!