The Chinese owner has denied it is willing to sell TikTok as the US ban escalates

The Chinese owner has denied it is willing to sell TikTok as the US ban escalates

TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance said on Thursday that it has no plans to sell the social media platform, its first official response to the fraught issue since President Joe Biden signed a bill that could lead to a nationwide ban on the wildly popular app.

“Foreign media reports that ByteDance is exploring the sale of TikTok are untrue,” the Beijing-based company said in a statement on Toutiao, a news aggregation app it owns and is popular in mainland China.

“ByteDance does not have any plans to sell TikTok,” he said. The statement was in direct response to an article by Information on Thursday that said Bytedance was exploring a scenario to sell the US TikTok business without the algorithm that recommends videos to TikTok users.

In the statement, Bytedance attached a screenshot of the Information report, which cited three people with knowledge of the discussions.

Until now Beijing-based ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok and a host of other apps, has remained silent on this week’s legislation in the US forcing forced sales. Chinese authorities have also been muted since the bill was signed into law despite Beijing previously making clear it would oppose any such move.

Congress passed the bill this week as part of a sweeping foreign aid package to support Israel and Ukraine. It was approved by the House on Saturday, and by the Senate on Tuesday.

The legislation poses the most serious risk to TikTok since US officials began raising concerns about the app in 2020. Under current US law, TikTok would have to find a new owner within months or be banned from the United States entirely, its biggest market with 170 million users. .

On Wednesday, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said the company would fight in court to stay online in the US.

The Chinese government has previously said it strongly opposes the forced sale of TikTok, and has the legal ability to do so. It sees TikTok’s technology as highly valuable and has taken steps since 2020 to ensure it can veto any sale by ByteDance.

TikTok’s algorithm, which keeps users glued to the app, is believed to be the key to its success. Algorithms provide recommendations based on user behavior, thus pushing the videos they want to watch.

US lawmakers have long worried about Beijing’s influence over the app. In particular, they fear that TikTok could share data with the Chinese government or manipulate the content displayed on its platform. So far, there is little evidence to support these concerns.

But as a company based in China, ByteDance is subject to various national intelligence, data security and cyber security laws.

In 2018, China amended its National Intelligence Law, which requires any organization or citizen to support, assist and cooperate with the country’s intelligence work. This means ByteDance is legally bound to help gather intelligence.

As a result, some countries have banned officials from downloading TikTok to their phones, but the US law is one of the most sweeping measures taken so far. India bans TikTok completely in 2020.