TikTok‘s owners would rather the app be shut down in the U.S. than ever sell it.
President Joe Biden just signed a bill that could see the video-sharing giant forced to sell the site within 12 months or face a nationwide ban. The app’s owners, ByteDance, would rather leave one of their biggest markets than sell the app.
“ByteDance doesn’t have any plans to sell TikTok,” the firm said on the social media site Toutiao.
Senators passed the bill 79 to 18 on April 23, days after the House of Representatives held a majority vote in favor of the ban. Biden signed the bill on April 24.
Michael Beckerman, the video-sharing giant’s head of public policy in America, has said they plan to challenge the bill in court if Biden signs it.
“This is an unprecedented deal worked out between the Republican Speaker and President Biden. The stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge,” he told Bloomberg.
TikTok said a ban in the U.S. would “trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans.”
“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans,” the tech company t said in a statement.
Fears were raised about the owners of the app potentially sharing information with the Chinese government.
TikTok’s parent company has repeatedly denied claims the Chinese government has access to user data on the app — which is very popular among teenagers and those in their 20s — and has called it “unfounded speculation.”
Already more than half of U.S. states and the federal government have disallowed TikTok from state-issued devices either completely or partially. Similar policies have been introduced in the Netherlands, the U.K. and the European Commission.
