TikTok completes deal to avoid US ban
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Long-running negotiations to secure TikTok’s future in the US have ended. The Chinese social media app will split its American operations from the rest of its global business. Also: Ukraine's President Zelensky says Kyiv and the US have reached a deal on post-war security guarantees, ahead of the first set of trilateral peace negotiations; the BBC is given rare access to facilities in Yemen where former detainees report being blindfolded, beaten and sexually abused; the US concludes the complicated process of withdrawing from the World Health Organisation; and a 410-million-year-old fossil may have been an entirely different form of life no longer found on Earth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.4 | I'm Celia Hatton, and in the early hours of Friday, the 23rd of January, these are our main stories. |
| 0:18.3 | TikTok finalizes a deal to spin off its U.S. business operations to avoid an American ban. |
| 0:24.5 | U.S. envoys meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow for late-night talks aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine. |
| 0:30.6 | And the BBC gains rare access to detention facilities in Yemen inside former military bases run by the United Arab Emirates. |
| 0:41.9 | Also in this podcast, U.S. immigration agents' treatment of a five-year-old boy in Minneapolis |
| 0:48.0 | sparks outrage. And... |
| 0:51.0 | We take crude oil from Russia. We still don't know what the destination is exactly it was, you know. |
| 0:58.5 | A BBC exclusive interview with a sailor aboard Russia's sanction-busting shadow fleet. |
| 1:07.6 | A deal's been struck on the popular social media platform TikTok and how it operates inside the U.S. |
| 1:14.4 | The app, which is Chinese-owned, has agreed to split its American operations from the rest of its global business. |
| 1:21.7 | The U.S. Congress had security concerns about TikTok's influence and the data it collects from its users, and it had ordered |
| 1:30.0 | TikTok to sell its operations to American investors to avoid an outright ban. |
| 1:35.5 | TikTok matters because it has a huge, highly engaged American user base, 200 million people, |
| 1:42.4 | many of whom use the app multiple times a day. |
| 1:45.4 | It's evolved to shape cultural trends and spread information through its unique algorithm. |
| 1:51.8 | It promotes content by closely monitoring how users are responding to videos, |
| 1:57.7 | instead of simply promoting the most popular users like many other apps do. Back to that |
| 2:02.6 | U.S. deal, our correspondent in Silicon Valley, Lily Jamali, told us why TikTok was ordered |
| 2:08.8 | to change its American operations. They were concerned about the fact that TikTok was owned by a |
| 2:15.1 | Chinese company, Bite Dance, and the company's ties to Beijing |
... |
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