President Joe Biden recently signed a law that bans TikTok in the United States. This is because TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. Many people in the government worry that China could use TikTok to spy on Americans since so many people use the app.
Biden said ByteDance has 9 months to sell TikTok to an American company. But ByteDance does not want to sell! Anonymous sources told reporters that ByteDance will do everything it can to fight the ban in court. If that does not work, ByteDance would rather shut down TikTok in America than sell it.
Why doesn’t ByteDance want to sell? Because TikTok’s recommendations are really good at keeping people on the app for a long time. The algorithms that choose what videos to show users are better than apps like Instagram. ByteDance does not want to lose these algorithms in a sale.
Also, TikTok actually does not make that much money from the US. Closing down there would not hurt ByteDance’s profits very much.
So get ready for a big legal battle! ByteDance will use every argument it can to stop the ban. It may be said that the ban goes against free speech rights. But since national security is a concern, this will be hard to win. In the end, if ByteDance absolutely had to choose, it would shut down TikTok in America instead of selling it.
