#Twitter eyeing purchase of TikTok’s US operations

Move over Microsoft — Twitter is joining the tech giant in pursuing the purchase of TikTok’s US operations after President Trump set a fall deadline for the video-sharing platform to strike a deal with an American company.

Twitter approached TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to express interest in an acquisition, two sources told Reuters.

The White House sparked the buying frenzy by flagging TikTok as a security threat because of its Chinese headquarters.

President Trump has signed an executive order that would ban TikTok from operating in the country if a deal with an American company isn’t struck by Sept. 20.

Trump and others in his administration have questioned the safety of the personal data collected by the Chinese company as tensions between the two countries rise.

ByteDance has insisted it has never provided TikTok user data to China and that it would not do so if asked.

The company’s CEO, Zhang Yiming, has expressed frustration over the U.S. forcing a sale, calling the timeframe “unreasonable” in an email to employees earlier this week.

The company threatened legal action Friday after Trump signed the executive order.

“For nearly a year, we have sought to engage with the U.S. government in good faith to provide a constructive solution to the concerns that have been expressed,” the company stated in an unsigned blog post.

“What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses,” the company said.

With Post wires