This is very likely based on the size of the moderation teams working for TikTok/Bytedance. It's also the reason why TikTok is going to be hard to scale profit

This is very likely based on the size of the moderation teams working for TikTok/Bytedance. It's also the reason why TikTok is going to be hard to scale profitably in advanced economies. Chinese staff, especially for work like moderation, is a lot cheaper. Worth nothing that TikTok operations globally is mainly supported by Bytedance staff in China. Very skeptical on how they can achieve splitting the company and launching an IPO without moving most of those jobs moving overseas. If they split off some staff into their own Chinese company owned by TikTok Global based in the US, it doesn't change anything. License from Bytedance to allow TikTok the use the codebase and code also won't fly in an IPO. The only way this makes sense is that TikTok will never IPO, this is merely a delaying tactic until the election year closes.