Hong Kong
CNN
—
TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance stated Thursday that it has no plans to promote the social media platform, its first official response on the fraught subject since President Joe Biden signed a bill that would result in a nationwide ban of the wildly well-liked app.
“Overseas media stories that ByteDance is exploring the sale of TikTok are unfaithful,” the Beijing-based firm stated in an announcement on Toutiao, a information aggregation app that it owns and is well-liked in mainland China.
“ByteDance doesn’t have any plan to promote TikTok,” it stated.
The assertion was in direct response to an article by the Information on Thursday that stated Bytedance was exploring situations for promoting TikTok’s US enterprise with out the algorithm that recommends movies to TikTok customers.
Within the assertion, Bytedance connected screenshots of the Info’s report, which cited three individuals with data of deliberations.
Till now Beijing-based ByteDance, the dad or mum firm of TikTok and a number of different apps, had remained quiet on this week’s laws within the US pushing for a compelled sale. Chinese language authorities have additionally been muted because the invoice was signed into legislation regardless of Beijing beforehand making clear it might oppose any such measure.
Congress handed the invoice this week as a part of a wide-ranging overseas support bundle to help Israel and Ukraine. It was approved by the House on Saturday, and by the Senate on Tuesday.
The laws poses probably the most critical threat to TikTok since US officers started raising concerns about the app in 2020. Underneath what’s now US legislation, TikTok is compelled to discover a new proprietor inside months or be banned from the US totally, its greatest market with 170 million customers.
On Wednesday, TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew stated the corporate would battle within the courts to remain on-line within the US.
“Relaxation assured, we aren’t going wherever,” he stated in a video posted on the app.
The Chinese language authorities has beforehand said it strongly opposes a compelled sale of TikTok, and has the legal ability to take action. It views TikTok’s expertise as extremely priceless and has taken steps since 2020 to make sure it might veto any sale by ByteDance.
TikTok’s algorithms, which hold customers glued to the app, are believed to be key to its success. The algorithms give suggestions based mostly on customers’ conduct, thus pushing movies they need to watch.
US lawmakers have lengthy been concerned about Beijing’s affect over the app. Particularly, they fear that TikTok may share information with the Chinese language authorities or manipulate content material displayed on its platform. To this point, there’s little proof to help these considerations.
However as a China-based firm, ByteDance is topic to a myriad of nationwide intelligence, information safety and cybersecurity legal guidelines.
In 2018, China amended its Nationwide Intelligence Regulation, which requires any group or citizen to help, help and cooperate with nationwide intelligence work. Meaning ByteDance is legally sure to assist with gathering intelligence.
Consequently, a number of countries have banned officers from downloading TikTok onto their telephones, however the US legislation is among the most sweeping measures taken to date. India banned TikTok entirely in 2020.