TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance said Thursday that it has no plans to sell the social media platform, its first official response on the fraught issue since President Joe Biden signed a bill that could lead to a nationwide ban of the wildly popular app.“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.
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.On Wednesday, TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew said the company would fight in the courts to stay online in the U.S.“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” he said in a video posted on the app.The Chinese government has previously said it strongly opposes a forced sale of TikTok, and has the legal ability to do so.