According to Toutaio, a news and information content platform that is a core product of the Chinese company ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance has no plans to sell TikTok.
Last weekend, Congress passed a measure that gave ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok or it will be banned in the United States. If a sale is in progress during those nine months, an additional three months would be added. On Wednesday, President Biden signed the measure into law.
“Foreign media reports that ByteDance is exploring the sale of TikTok are untrue. ByteDance has no plans to sell TikTok,” Toutaio stated on Thursday.
TikTok had responded to Biden signing the bill with a statement on X:
This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court. We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail. The fact is, we have invested billions of dollars to keep U.S. data safe and our platform free from outside influence and manipulation. This ban would devastate seven million businesses and silence 170 million Americans.
Despite the fact that Biden signed the measure into law, his reelection campaign informed NBC News Wednesday that it still uses TikTok to appeal to voters for another year.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), an outspoken critic of TikTok who has been fighting against its influence for years, called for a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review of TikTok back in 2019. He stated:
For years, we’ve allowed the Chinese Communist Party to control one of the most popular apps in America. That was dangerously shortsighted, but thankfully we are waking up to the threat China-controlled companies pose to America. We must move more quickly in the future when we encounter similar threats, because China won’t give up. There will be lawsuits, new apps, and new plots from Beijing.
Rubio said in an August 2023 opinion piece, “TikTok’s public-policy chief blatantly lied under oath when he denied US data is stored in China. … ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, was caught in October using the app to spy on American journalists.”
Rubio noted that The New York Times reported TikTok stores Americans’ private information, which includes driver’s licenses, addresses, and device IDs, in China, where they can be accessed by ByteDance employees. He also pointed out that Forbes revealed that the tax information and Social Security numbers of content creators on TikTok are also stored in China.
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“China’s totalitarian regime hates the United States and is bent on displacing us as the world’s greatest power,” Rubio wrote. “If TikTok users believe their sensitive data are safe in Beijing’s hands — that Beijing wouldn’t use those data to influence, coerce, extort or spy on them in the case of a geopolitical conflict — they need to think again.”
Related: ‘Think Again’: Rubio Warns Americans Against TikTok, Wants It Banned