The US government has asked the owner of TikTok, the Chinese company ByteDance, to sell its shares in the popular social network so that it is not banned in the United States, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
For years, the United States has expressed reservations against the hugely popular short-form video platform, seen by many authorities as a threat to national security.
An Insider Intelligence report published earlier this month found that TikTok, which has already surpassed YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in time spent by American adults, is now chasing after Netflix.
These statistics show the importance of TikTok in the United States, where it has more than one hundred million users.
But its connection to ByteDance worries US authorities, who fear that Beijing will use the social network to access sensitive data or manipulate public opinion.
TikTok has denied these intentions for years, but tensions between the two countries and, recently, the passage of an alleged Chinese “spy balloon” over the US, have returned calls for the US to stand firm against China.
According to WSJ sources, the White House ultimatum was issued by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the government body responsible for assessing the risks of any foreign investment to the national security of the United States.
The US government and Treasury declined to confirm the information and TikTok did not immediately react to a request for a response from Agence France-Presse (AFP).
TikTok, which has gone to great lengths to reassure politicians and the American public about its integrity, was counting on this federal agency to find a middle ground.
“The fastest and most effective way to address these concerns (…) is for CFIUS to adopt the agreement that we have been working on with them for almost two years,” a TikTok spokesperson had highlighted in late February.
The TikTok representative was reacting at the time to a Republican-backed bill that would give President Joe Biden the authority to completely ban the social network from the country.
The White House recently ruled that federal agencies must ensure that TikTok is off the official mobile devices of their employees, after its ban was signed into law in late December.
Several US states and academic institutions have taken similar steps.
The company stores US user data on servers located in the country, but has already admitted that China-based employees had access to it, albeit under a strict and limited structure, denying that the data has reached the Chinese government.
In the summer of 2020, former President Donald Trump signed several executive orders in an attempt to ban the platform.
Then, his already considerable popularity exploded thanks to the covid-19 pandemic, reaching beyond his original audience, teenagers.
Source: TSF
