An analysis published on Tuesday by Business Insider revealed that, despite Trump’s push to ban the application from Americans’ devices, TikTok’s US offices in New York City, New York; Los Angeles, California; and Mountain View, California, have actually increased job postings by 3.5% in the past week, with 357 total positions available.
“The share of job listings in TikTok's US offices as a proportion of all openings available at the company has also increased slightly, to 28% from 27.4%,” Chris Stokel-Walker detailed in the analysis.
"TikTok seems to still be hiring at an impressive clip," Brendan Gahan, a partner and chief social officer at US creative agency Mekanism, told Business Insider.
"I imagine they must be incredibly confident that they're not going anywhere. Trump pushing back the ban deadline probably reinforces this perception."
Karyn Spencer, a former employee of the discontinued video-sharing service Vine and current senior vice president at influencer marketing firm Whalar, echoed Gahan’s comments on the company’s self-assurance, claiming the hires “demonstrate their confidence that there is a future for their company.”
Spencer also characterized Kevin Mayer, the US CEO of TikTok, and Vanessa Pappas, its US general manager, as “two very capable people with deep experience in steering large companies through challenges."
And if their confidence backfires, she noted, there’s likely “an army of lawyers ready to fight as needed."
Trump’s August 6 executive order on the matter detailed that the popular video-sharing app “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories.”
The order argued that this data collected by TikTok’s owner, the Beijing-based company ByteDance, could fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, granting it “access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”
Trump argued that this information could then be weaponized against Americans - particularly government employees and contractors - via blackmail and “corporate espionage.”
A Sunday follow-up announcement by the US president laid out a 90-day deadline for a potential buyer to acquire TikTok’s US operations from ByteDance. He had previously set a 45-day limit.
