There’s always a chance you don’t come back, and there’s likely to be a loss of marketshare for simply being unavailable for a period and forcing users to trial alternatives.

But, TikTok is not purely commercially focused. A majority of the voting stock of ByteDance is held by the Chinese government, who clearly see non-financial strategic value in controlling it.

Otherwise, they likely could have negotiated a spin out the US operation, whereby they retain most of the equity upside but give majority voting control to a US buyer.