"Foreign media reports that ByteDance is exploring the sale of TikTok are untrue," the Beijing-based company said in a statement on Toutiao, a news aggregation app that it owns and is popular in mainland China.The statement was in direct response to an article by the Information on Thursday that said Bytedance was exploring scenarios for selling TikTok's US business without the algorithm that recommends videos to TikTok users.
The legislation poses the most serious risk to TikTok since US officials began raising concerns about the app in 2020. Under what is now US law, TikTok is forced to find a new owner within months or be banned from the United States entirely, its biggest market with 170 million users. US lawmakers have long been concerned about Beijing's influence over the app. In particular, they worry that TikTok could share data with the Chinese government or manipulate content displayed on its platform. So far, there's little evidence to support these concerns.