(CNN) — TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, said Thursday it has no plans to sell the social media platform, its first official response on the tense issue since President Joe Biden signed a law that could lead to a nationwide ban on the app. popular app.
“Reports in foreign media that ByteDance is considering the sale of TikTok are false,” the Beijing-based company said in a statement on Toutiao, a news aggregation app it owns that is popular in mainland China.
“ByteDance has no plans to sell TikTok.”
The statement was directly responding to an article published Thursday by The Information that claimed Bytedance was exploring scenarios for selling TikTok’s U.S. business without the algorithm that recommends videos to the app’s users.
In the statement, Bytedance attached screenshots of The Information’s report, which cited three people with knowledge of the deliberations.
Until now, Beijing-based ByteDance, parent of TikTok and several other apps, had remained silent on this week’s legislation in the U.S. that pushes for a fire sale. Chinese authorities have also not commented since the law was enacted, even though Beijing had already made clear that it would oppose any such measure.
Congress passed the bill this week as part of a broad foreign aid package to support Israel and Ukraine. It was approved by the House of Representatives on Saturday and by the Senate on Tuesday.
The legislation poses the most serious risk to TikTok since US authorities became concerned about the app in 2020. Under what is now US law, TikTok is required to find a new owner within months or be banned. entirely in the United States, its largest market with 170 million users.
On Wednesday, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said the company would fight in court to stay online in the United States.
“Rest assured, we’re not going anywhere,” he said in a video posted on the app.
The Chinese government has already said that it strongly opposes a forced sale of TikTok, and that it has the legal capacity to do so. It views TikTok’s technology as highly valuable and has taken steps since 2020 to ensure it can veto any sale by ByteDance.
TikTok’s algorithms, which keep users glued to the app, are believed to be the key to its success. Algorithms offer recommendations based on user behavior, thus promoting the videos they want to watch.
U.S. lawmakers have long been concerned about Beijing’s influence on the app. Specifically, they are concerned that TikTok could share data with the Chinese government or manipulate the content displayed on its platform. So far, there is little evidence to support these concerns.
But as a company based in China, ByteDance is subject to myriad national intelligence, data security and cybersecurity laws.
In 2018, China amended its National Intelligence Law, requiring any organization or citizen to support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work. That means ByteDance is legally obligated to help with intelligence gathering.
As a result, several countries have banned officials from downloading TikTok to their phones, but the US law is one of the most radical measures taken yet. India banned TikTok completely in 2020.
CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this report.
