China’s tech giant ByteDance has said it has no plans to sell TikTok after a new US law set a deadline to abandon the popular video platform or be banned in the US.
US lawmakers set a nine-month deadline on national security grounds, claiming that TikTok can be used by the Chinese government for espionage and propaganda as long as it is owned by ByteDance.
ByteDance denied it was considering a sale.
“Foreign media reports about ByteDance investigating the sale of TikTok are not true,” the company posted Thursday on Toutiao, the Chinese-language platform it owns.
“ByteDance has no plans to sell TikTok.”
TikTok has been a political and diplomatic movement for years, first finding itself in the crosshairs of former president Donald Trump’s administration, which unsuccessfully tried to ban it.
It has strongly denied any link to the Chinese government, saying it does not and will not share US user data with Beijing.
TikTok says it has also spent nearly $1.5 billion on “Project Texas,” in which US user data would be stored in the United States.
Its critics say data is only part of the problem, and that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm “The Secret Sauce” to its success — must also be cut from ByteDance.
The CEO of TikTok Shou Zi Chew has said that the company will take the fight against the new law to court, but some experts believe that for the Supreme Court of the United States, national security issues can overcome the protection of free speech.
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