ByteDance would shut down TikTok in US rather than sell it

nme.com:

TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance has said that it has no intention of selling the business, and would rather see the platform shut down.The news comes after the US passed a law forcing the company to sell the hugely popular social media platform, or see the app banned in America.The sell-or-ban measure was issued into law by US President Joe Biden earlier this week (April 24), following a long-running dispute over claims that the company’s ownership structure could allow the Chinese government to gain access to the data of its millions of American users.To date, over 30 American states, Canada, and the European Union have separately banned the app from use on government-owned devices over concerns it could be a security risk.

India banned the app nationwide in January 2021, while Taiwan and Afghanistan did the same in 2022.The bill was first brought up last month, when the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 24 to 16 to give President Joe Biden the power to enforce a ban on the social media app over concerns that the app is a national security threat and a Chinese espionage tool.This week’s ruling was voted for with an overwhelming majority of 79 to 18, and was signed by President Joe Biden.

With it, ByteDance will have an estimated nine months to sell TikTok. In the event that ByteDance does not sell the platform’s stakes in the United States, TikTok will be banned from US markets, and will be removed from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store nationwide.Now, sharing a post to its official account on Toutiao – another platform it owns – the company confirmed that “ByteDance doesn’t have any plans to sell TikTok” (via BBC).