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Deepti Sri · · 1 min readFormer TikTok CEO says he felt ‘screwed over’ by the Trump administration
“In the first public recounting of his departure from ByteDance last year, Kevin Mayer, the former Disney executive who was TikTok’s CEO for three months, agreed that he felt ‘screwed over’ by the Trump administration,” reported South China Morning Post, citing a transcript of his interview with CNBC.
Details:
- Mayer said he knew the dual role of CEO and chief operating officer would vanish after former President Donald Trump signed two executive orders that forced parent firm ByteDance to divest TikTok’s US operations.
- The ex-chief executive is optimistic about TikTok’s future, despite expressing little interest in working under the company’s US buyers.
Context:
- The CEO resigned after three months on the job amid Trump’s threats to ban the short-video app in the US. The threat to ban the app came over concerns of TikTok collecting personal data of Americans and sending it for use in China.
- TikTok avoided a ban in the US after Trump agreed to its deal with Oracle, which will process the the short-video platform’s data in the country.
- Recently, the Biden administration signaled that it would slow down efforts to force TikTok to unwind its US operations.
Editing by Collin Furtado and Eileen C. Ang
(And yes, we’re serious about ethics and transparency. More information here.)
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