The US government has asked TikTok’s parent company, China’s ByteDance, to sell its shares in the famous app, otherwise it will be banned in the US, according to an article from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published this Wednesday.
Pressure has been building for years in the United States against the wildly popular platform, perceived as a threat to national security by many elected officials because of its membership in a Chinese group.
The February downing of an alleged Chinese spy balloon sparked renewed efforts in Congress to ban the entertaining short-video app, accused of giving Beijing access to user data around the world, something TikTok has long denied.
Ultimatum
According to sources in the American newspaper, the White House ultimatum comes from CFIUS, a government agency in charge of evaluating the risks of any foreign investment for US national security.
TikTok, which is going to great lengths to reassure politicians and the public about its integrity, was counting on the federal agency finding a compromise.
He was reacting to consideration of a Republican-backed bill that would give President Joe Biden the authority to ban TikTok entirely.
In the summer of 2020, former President Donald Trump signed several executive orders to try to ban the platform, and since then its already considerable popularity has skyrocketed thanks to the pandemic, beyond its original audience, teenagers.
The app has surpassed YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in “time spent” by US adults on each platform in recent years, and now trails Netflix, according to Insider Intelligence.
Source: BFM TV
