The chief executive of TikTok said on Wednesday that the social media company TikTok is expecting to win the legal challenge.
He expressed his confidence that their company would win the battle against the new legislation signed by President Joe Biden. The main aim of this law was to ban the use of TikTok in the United States, which is widely used by more than 170 million Americans.
CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi reassured in the video that rest assured they are not going anywhere. This ban happened according to the law, ByteDance, the owner company of TikTok based in China, must sell its US assets within 270 days, otherwise, face the ban. Chew expressed his confidence that they would win this legal battle.
President Biden set the deadline of 19 January for TikTok to sell US assets before his term ends. But if ByteDance is making progress, he can give them three more months. This decision might be because Biden ran a re-election campaign against former president Donald Trump.
The spokeswoman of the White House, Jean-Pierre emphasized that the administration wants to avoid the ban as it is about the ownership of China on TikTok.
Back in 2020, different legal challenges prevented Trump from implementing the ban on TikTok and WeChat, Tencent-owned platforms in the US.
Now Trump is changing his stance and stating that Biden is advocating the TikTok ban and he would bear the responsibility for this law’s implementation.
Meanwhile, CEO Chew emphasized that make no mistake, this is a ban on TikTok.
Many experts are questioning whether any potential buyer has the financial resources to own TikTok and whether both countries China and the US government would approve such sales.
The U.S. Senate passed the bill on Tuesday night because American lawmakers were worried that China might get access to Americans’ data or spy on them through the app. The U.S. House of Representatives approved it on Saturday.
Last week Apple revealed that China has been instructed to remove the Meta platforms which include WhatsApp, Facebook, and threads from its app store in China due to Chinese National Security.
The new law might make it easier for President Biden to ban TikTok if ByteDance doesn’t sell it, experts suggest. If ByteDance doesn’t sell TikTok, big app stores like Apple and Google won’t be allowed to offer it or provide services for ByteDance apps or TikTok’s website.
Senator Laphonza Butler, a Democrat from California, wants the White House to think about the 8,000 Americans who work for TikTok, especially in places like New York and California. Butler wrote a letter to Biden saying we need to think about these workers and how it will affect our local economies.
The law also gives the White House new ways to ban or make foreign-owned apps sell if they’re seen as security threats.