China’s TikTok is reportedly exploring its options to see if it can escape the sell-or-ban legislation that the U.S. Senate passed on Tuesday night, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.
TikTok will be doing what it can to fight the legislation that would force its China-based parent company ByteDance to sell the social media platform or else be banned in the United States, according to a report by Axios.
Shou Zi Chew, chief executive officer of TikTok Inc., speaks during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. The New Economy Forum is being organized by Bloomberg Media Group, a division of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. Photographer: Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Even after the bill is signed by President Biden, the Chinese app will be reviewing multiple options, the first one reportedly being to fight the legislation in court.
Ironically, the Chinese company — whose parent company is beholden to a communist regime — plans to file a lawsuit on First Amendment grounds after the bill is signed by the U.S. president, according to Axios Pro Tech Policy reporter Ashley Gold. Breitbart News recently reported that TikTok reportedly plans to dump its General Counsel, the executive who would have spearheaded this fight.
If that initiative fails, TikTok reportedly plans to wait out the U.S. election to see who the Chinese company will be dealing with in the coming year.
Notably, the soon-to-be-signed sell-or-ban legislation gives ByteDance nearly a year to sell TikTok before the app is banned in the United States.
As a last resort, ByteDance could create a “TikTok U.S.” as an independent company with its own stock, separate from the Chinese TikTok, according to Axios Pro Rata author Dan Primack.
The Chinese Communist Party currently enjoys access to TikTok user data — given that ByteDance is beholden to the communist regime — and will likely do whatever it can to refrain from giving up that power.
TikTok insiders recently claimed that the company works very closely with its Chinese parent ByteDance despite claims of independence. According to one insider, they were given a fake U.S. executive to report to, while regularly sending sensitive user data to communist China. As Breitbart News reported:
In one example, Evan Turner, who worked as a senior data scientist at TikTok from April to September 2022, said that he first reported to a ByteDance executive in Beijing, but at some point was told to start reporting to a Seattle-based executive.
The only problem was that this American TikTok executive did not exist, except for on paper, Turner said.
After being told that he would start reporting to the Seattle-based executive, an HR representative followed up with Turner in a separate conversation and informed him that he would actually still be working with the Chinese ByteDance executive, the ex-TikTok employee said.
The communist government could also “water down” a sale of TikTok by refusing to allow the sale to include the app’s famous algorithm, Axios noted.
As Breitbart News reported, China has been secretly lobbying the U.S. Congress regarding TikTok, Capitol Hill staffers familiar with the situation say. TikTok has also purchased $2.1 million in television advertising in the battleground states in an apparent attempt to meddle in U.S. elections.
The move to ban TikTok in the U.S. unless ByteDance sells it comes after years of concern over Chinese communists running a popular social media platform that has proven itself to be a danger for kids and teens, and whose parent company has already been caught snooping on journalists.
Additionally, TikTok is widely considered a national security threat, with lawmakers already having banned the Chinese app from U.S. government devices.
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