TikTok owner ByteDance would reportedly rather shut down the video-sharing app in the U.S. than sell it should its challenges against a law banning it fail.
Four sources familiar with the situation told Reuters the Chinese company is more likely to remove U.S. residents' access to TikTok rather than sell it to another company or an investment group by the January 19, 2025 deadline. This comes as ByteDance itself declared it won't sell TikTok via a statement on another of its platforms, Toutiao.
“Foreign media reports that ByteDance is exploring the sale of TikTok are untrue,” ByteDance said in the statement (via The Hill). “ByteDance doesn’t have any plan to sell TikTok."
President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on April 24, 2024 — which passed the Senate largely over fears of China accessing U.S. residents' data or using TikTok for surveillance — but ByteDance declared it would "continue to challenge this unconstitutional ban."
A source told Reuters that TikTok's algorithm is too important to ByteDance's overall operations so selling that information is therefore highly unlikely. The app also contributes to just a small portion of its total revenue and daily active users, so a shutdown would have "limited impact" on ByteDance overall.
The U.S. itself accounts for just 5% of ByteDance's overall daily active users, despite it accounting for around 25% of TikTok's overall revenues in 2023, according to Reuters' sources. They also said its main asset, besides the algorithm, is user data and product operations and management.
The law banning TikTok is the furthest the U.S. has gone in an otherwise long and complex relationship with the app. Montana passed state legislation banning it entirely but this is currently being contested in court and therefore not law yet.
The app is banned, however, on any Federal government-issued smartphones and over 30 states including Alabama, Illinois, and Pennsylvania have also banned the use of TikTok on government devices.
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Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
