new york the latest twist in the tiktok saga is an especially strange turn in a tale filled with strange turns suddenly microsoft known primarily for work software like windows and office is in talks to buy the popular chineseowned video app which has raised nationalsecurity concerns for us officialsthe us government is effectively forcing bytedance tiktoks owner to sell so it can salvage the app in the us a huge and valuable marketread alsotrump to give tiktoks chinese owner 45 days to agree sale reportus president donald trump has agreed to give chinas bytedance 45 days to negotiate a sale of popular shortvideo app tiktok to microsoft corp two people familiar with the matter said on sundayus will ban tiktok on september 15 unless an american company buys it says trumpus president donald trump on monday said the popular chinese app tiktok would be banned in the country beginning september 15 unless it is bought by an american company and asserted that a substantial amount of the buyout deal should go to the treasurypresident donald trump has threatened a ban on tiktok and other administration officials and us lawmakers of both parties have said the appschinese ownership is a concernits unclear what shape such a ban would take or whether the sale will go through tiktoks users are posting videos saying they are upset and angry heres whats at stakeq what is tiktok againa the app is a home for fun goofy videos that are easy to make and to watch thats made it immensely popular particularly with young people and us tech giants like facebook and snapchat see it as a competitive threat tiktok says it has 100 million us users and hundreds of millions globally it has its own influencer culture allowing people to make a living from posting videos on the service and hosts ads from major us companiesbytedance ltd a chinese company launched tiktok in 2017 then bought musically a video service popular with teens in the us and europe and combined the two a twin service douyin is available for chinese usersq what concerns us officials about the appa tiktok like most other social networks collects data about its users and moderates whats posted it grabs peoples locations and messages they send one another for example and tracks what people watch in order to know what kinds of videos they like and how best to target ads to themsimilar behavior has raised concerns about american social networks but chinese ownership adds an additional wrinkle because the chinese government can demand that companies help it gather intelligence in the case of tiktok this remains a hypothetical threat said samm sacks a researcher at yale law schools paul tsai china center but it could be happeningtiktok has vowed that us user data is not stored in china and that it would not hand over user data to the government but experts have said that if the chinese government wants information it will get