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

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, announced Thursday that it had no intention of selling its application, despite a new American law which obliges him to cut all ties with China under penalty of ban in the United States.

TikTok has for several years been in the crosshairs of American authorities who believe that the application of short videos allows the Chinese government to spy on and manipulate American citizens.

Its owner, the private group ByteDance, created in Beijing, fiercely contests these allegations.

At the center of fears is a 2017 Chinese law that requires local companies to hand over personal data that would concern national security upon request from the authorities.

The US Senate adopted a text on Tuesday which obliges ByteDance to sell TikTok under penalty of exclusion from Apple and Google application stores on American territory. © AFP – Pedro PARDO

The US Senate adopted a text on Tuesday, promulgated the next day by President Joe Biden, which obliges ByteDance to sell TikTok under penalty of exclusion from Apple and Google application stores on American territory.

Despite the pressure, ByteDance has no intention of giving in.

“Foreign press reports that ByteDance would consider selling TikTok are false,” the group claimed on Jinri Toutiao, another app it owns, adding that it “does not intend to sell TikTok.”

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

– “Thug Methods” –

TikTok, which grew spectacularly during the pandemic, has 170 million users in the United States.

TikTok users around the world © AFP – Julia Han JANICKI, Valentin RAKOVSKY, Laurence SAUBADU

Its value is difficult to estimate, particularly in the case of a forced sale. In 2020, ByteDance had set its price at $60 billion, according to the Bloomberg agency, while the government of Donald Trump wanted – already – to force the group to separate.

Meta, Instagram's parent company, or the American internet giant Google, would probably be prevented from buying the application for competitive reasons.

Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month he wanted to bring together a group of investors to buy TikTok.

A sale would face further challenges in opposition to the Chinese authorities, who last month castigated the “thug methods” of the US Senate.

In 2020, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce amended its list of technologies subject to export restrictions or bans.

The list includes in particular artificial intelligence technologies (data processing, content recommendation, etc.) which have made TikTok successful, where videos are displayed on users' screens mainly based on their tastes.

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

“If [the TikTok application] were ruled out in the United States, we would not sell it”, another investor, Mitchell Green of the American fund Lead Edge Capital, assured CNBC last month.

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