TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer on Thursday stepped down from his post as Donald Trump threatens to ban the app in the US.
"It is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company," Mayer said in an email to employees according to the New York Times.
Mayer's move comes amid enormous backlash and threats of a ban on ByteDance the parent company of TikTok, from US President Donald Trump "In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for," Mayer wrote in an email to the employees, reported the New York Times.
Vanessa Pappas, general manager of TikTok in North America, will take over as interim global head of the company.
TikTok, in an emailed statement, confirmed the departure and said that the political dynamics of the last few months had "significantly changed" the scope of Mayer's role.
ByteDance's founder and CEO Yiming Zhang said in a separate letter that the company was "moving quickly to find resolutions to the issues that we face globally, particularly in the U.S. and India."
TikTok which has 100 million users in the US has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over an executive order banning any US transactions with its parent company ByteDance.
President Trump filed an executive order on August 6, prohibiting ByteDance from doing any transaction in the US for 45 days.
Trump issued another executive order on August 14, giving ByteDance an option to divest its TikTok business in the US within 90 days.
TikTok has filed the lawsuit against the first executive order. Saying that it strongly disagrees with the Trump administration's position that TikTok is a national security threat, the company alleged that the "US administration failed to follow due process".
