TikTok might be sticking around in the US, but it may not be the TikTok you know.
Aside from that one dark day in January when the app was temporarily unavailable, it’s been nothing but delays when it comes to the enforcement of the TikTok divest-or-ban law that passed last year. Last month, for the third time since taking office, President Trump issued a legally questionable executive order delaying the US operations’ required sell-off date, which keeps the app up and running in the US until September 17. Now, it seems TikTok may be working on a new, US-specific version of the app to avoid a ban ahead of the latest deadline.
According to The Information, TikTok is developing a spinoff app, known internally as “M2,” that could become available to US users on September 5 ahead of a potential sale of the platform’s US business to a group of investors including Oracle, one of the many interested buyers to have thrown their hat in the ring in recent months.
Last week, Trump indicated he had a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy TikTok’s US operations and said he would begin speaking with Chinese officials about a sale this week, though yesterday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson declined to confirm any talks. Without sign-off from the Chinese government, which Trump has had less-than-cordial relations with (and which he threatened with an additional 10% tariff on Sunday), the sale cannot go through.
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Not-so-easy switch? If the sale goes through and M2 is a go, the TikTok app that is currently in use by more than 170 million US-based users could shut down by March of next year, according to The Information. Already, some users are expressing hesitancy around switching to a US-only version of the app, citing censorship concerns and raising questions about just how many users a globally disconnected platform might attract.
There is also the question of whether M2 will have the same algorithm as the existing platform and, with it, the same appeal.The Chinese government has so far expressed staunch opposition to selling the TikTok algorithm.
As for advertising on M2? It’s unclear what it could look like, although Khartoon Weiss, TikTok’s VP of global business solutions, told advertisers in May that the platform’s advertising business “will not change” amid its uncertain future. With the news of a potentially separate app for the US market, though, one could imagine that some things—like demographic targeting—could prove to be the exception.