Despite the ultimatum, TikTok's parent company refuses to sell the app in the United States

TikTok has been in the crosshairs of US authorities for several years, who believe that the use of short videos allows the Chinese government to spy on and manipulate US citizens. Its owner, the private group ByteDance, founded in Beijing, fiercely disputes these allegations.

At the heart of the fears is a 2017 Chinese law that requires local companies to hand over personal data that could be related to national security upon government request.

Rumors of a sale

On Tuesday, the US Senate adopted a text, which was announced the next day by President Joe Biden, by which ByteDance undertakes to sell TikTok under penalty of exclusion from the Apple and Google app stores in the US. Despite the pressure, ByteDance has no intention of backing down.

“Foreign press reports that ByteDance is considering selling TikTok are false“, the group claimed on Jinri Toutiao, another app belonging to it, adding that no “has no plans to sell TikTok“.

“We will continue to fight for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side and we expect them to win“, TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean, assured his subscribers.

TikTok, which has grown dramatically during the pandemic, now has nearly 170 million users in the United States. Its value is difficult to estimate, especially in the case of a forced sale. In 2020, ByteDance set its price tag at $60 billion, according to Bloomberg, while Donald Trump’s government wanted — already — to force the group to split.

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, or the US internet giant Google, would likely be prevented from buying the app for competitive reasons. Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month that he wanted to bring together a group of investors to buy TikTok. The sale would also face opposition from Chinese authorities, who last month criticized “violent methods” from the US Senate.

In 2020, China’s Ministry of Commerce revised its list of technologies subject to export restrictions or bans. The list specifically includes the artificial intelligence technologies (data processing, content recommendation, etc.) that have made TikTok successful, where videos are shown on users’ screens mainly based on their tastes.

ByteDance has several international investors, including the American companies General Atlantic and SIG, as well as the Japanese group SoftBank.

“If [l’application TikTok] was off in the United States, we wouldn’t sell it“, another investor, Mitchell Green from the American fund Lead Edge Capital, assured the CNBC channel last month.