TikTok’s situation in the United States hangs by a very thin thread. The U.S. government, led by President Joe Biden, is demanding that ByteDance forcefully sell TikTok in less than a month if it does not want to face a possible ban of the app in the country. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times were the first to pick up the express request to TikTok’s parent company.
The White House’s demands add fuel to a fire that is far from being extinguished, and could trigger new regulations of TikTok in the rest of the world. The app is currently banned on official devices in the United States, Canada and the European Commission.
Earlier this month, a bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would give the U.S. Secretary of Commerce the ability to prohibit foreign companies from operating in the country that could pose “threats to national security,” one of the main reasons given by both Democratic and Republican Party politicians for vetoing the app in the country.
As we reported earlier this week, one of the main reasons why the United States wants to ban the app is that, theoretically, TikTok could cede US user data to the Chinese government. This is something that former US President Donald Trump himself said during his term in office, where he also wanted to force the sale of TikTok and even ban it, although without success in the end.
So far, TikTok has reiterated that U.S. user data is not shared with the Chinese government or stored in China. The U.S. government’s new demands to force the sale of TikTok come just days before its CEO, Shou Zi Chew, is scheduled to testify before a House of Representatives committee.
