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TikTok’s Chinese company, Byte Dance, said on Thursday that the social media platform has no intention of being sold. This is the first official response to the fraught issue since US President Joe Biden signed a bill that could lead to a nationwide ban of the popular app in the United States. The Beijing-bbased company said in a statement in Touatio, a news aggregation app that it owns and is popular in mainland China, that the foreign media reports that Byte Dance is exploring the sale of TikTok are untrue.
The statement was a response, directed to an article that was produced by the information on Thursday that said Byte Dance was exploring scenarios for selling TikTok’s US business without the algorithm that recommends videos to users.
Until now, Beijing-based ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok and a host of other apps, has remained quiet on this week’s legislation in the US, pushing for a forced sale. Moreover, Chinese authorities have been silent since the bill was signed into law, despite Beijing previously making it clear it would oppose any such measure.
The bill was passed by Congress this week as part of a wide-ranging foreign aid package to support Israel and Ukraine. It was then approved by the house on Saturday and by the Senate on Tuesday. This legislation poses a huge potential risk to TikTok since officials in the United States began raising concerns about the app In 2020.
It is now without doubt that according to US law, TikTok is forced to find a new owner within months or be banned entirely from the United States, which is its biggest market with more than 170 million users. On Wednesday, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Cheung, said the company would fight in court to stay online in the US.
The Chinese government had previously said that it strongly opposes a forced sale of TikTok and has the legal ability to do so. The government views TikTok’s technology as highly valuable, as it has taken various steps since 2020 to ensure its success. The algorithm that keeps users glued to the app is believed to be the success of the app. This is because the algorithms give recommendations based on users behavior, thus pushing videos they want to watch.
US lawmakers have been concerned about Beijing’s influence over the app. To be precise, they worry that TikTok could share data with the Chinese government or manipulate content displayed on its platform, but there’s little evidence to support these concerns. However, as a China-based company, ByteDance is subject to a myriad of national intelligence, data security, and cyber security laws.
This means that ByteDance is legally bound to gather intelligence, and as a result, a number of countries have banned officials from using the app, and India banned TikTok entirely in 2020. However, the US measure is one of the most comprehensive measures taken so far.
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