TikTok owners say they have no plans to sell US business and would prefer shutdown [Video]

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance would reportedly favour shutting down the app altogether over offloading its business after the US passed a new law forcing it to sell the platform or be banned in the country.

“ByteDance doesn’t have any plans to sell TikTok,” ByteDance said on the social media platform Toutiao, which it owns.

ByteDance would rather shut down the app than sell it if it exhausts all legal options to fight the ban in the US, Reuters reported citing anonymous sources.

After American president Joe Biden signed the bill passed by the Senate into law, reports emerged suggesting that TikTok’s parent company could sell its operations to a US-based company, but without the algorithm that recommends videos on the app.

ByteDance deems TikTok’s algorithm core to its overall operations, including those of its other domestic video-sharing platforms in China…