As TikTok faces a looming January 19 ban in the United States, reports have been plentiful revealing which billionaires and public figures are considering buying the Chinese app, like a report claiming China is considering selling their popular platform to Tesla Founder and X CEO Elon Musk — a report that TikTok claims is “pure fiction.”
On Monday (January 13), days ahead of the January 19 deadline to sell the popular app TikTok, Bloomberg reported that China was considering selling to Elon Musk. However, a representative for China-based TikTok shut down and denied the reports about offloading their shares in the app to Elon Musk, telling Variety, “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
As we’ve previously shared, the China-based app TikTok is in danger of being banned in the United States under a law set to take effect on January 19; unless the Supreme Court issues a ruling to stop the app from being outlawed. The law, dubbed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, prohibits Apple and Google’s app stores, as well as web-hosting platforms, from distributing or hosting TikTok in the United States, unless ByteDance sells its ownership in the app to a third party located in a country that is not deemed a “foreign adversary” of the United States.
Thus far, TikTok’s Chinese owner (ByteDance, which is based in Beijing) has been incessantly fighting the ban against them, likely relying on claims that President-elect Donald Trump would delay the ban and seek a better solution once he is inaugurated and takes office on January 20.
On Friday (January 10), the Supreme Court heard arguments after TikTok filed an emergency appeal to request a block of the January 19 ban. During the hearing, TikTok and ByteDance argued that the law violates the United States First Amendment, affecting the nation’s 170 million app users.
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However, the Supreme Court Justices appear to be in favor of the U.S. government, which argues that the TikTok app is a national security threat as it is owned and operated under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Communist Party. Arguing against the January 19 ban imposed by the U.S. government, TikTok’s Chinese-based owner ByteDance insists on not selling its approximate 40% stake in the app; not to any entity or investor, including Elon Musk, as new reports claim.
The U.S. government has ordered the company to do as such, with their approval; however, Chinese officials previously stated that if ByteDance did attempt to sell its stake in TikTok, the move would be blocked as it represents a technology export.
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