President-elect Donald Trump is signaling he might reevaluate a pending ban on TikTok that is set to take effect Jan. 19, one day before his inauguration.
The ban would go into effect unless TikTok's parent company ByteDance sells to a non-Chinese buyer.
A source said that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday.
Trump's potential support for TikTok would be an about-face to his stance on the company in 2020. In the final months of his first term, Trump issued an executive order that would have forced TikTok to sell or close, citing privacy concerns.
Trump said in his 2020 order that TikTok “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users -- threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information."
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Trump's executive order ended up going nowhere after judicial review. But in more recent times, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act with bipartisan support in February. Lawmakers expressed concern that the Chinese government could force ByteDance, a Chinese company, to share user data and manipulate algorithms to influence U.S. public opinion.
Earlier on Monday, TikTok appealed a lower court ruling to the Supreme Court, asking the high court to overturn the ban. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court ruled against TikTok and its parent company, which argued that the law requiring the company’s sale is unconstitutional.
Lawmakers expressed concern that the Chinese government could force ByteDance to share user data and manipulate algorithms to influence U.S. public opinion.
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Content creators who rely on the app for income filed a similar motion with the court, claiming the law is in opposition to their right to free speech.
TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the country. The company says it has 170 million monthly users.
If the Supreme Court does not step in, the law is slated to go into effect on Jan. 19. TikTok asked the court to inform them of a decision by Jan. 6.
