Congress has been working to disentangle TikTok from the Beijing-based company because they are worried that China may obtain data that belongs to millions of Americans.
ByteDance “is not an agent of China or any other country,” according to TikTok. Furthermore, ByteDance argues that it is not a Chinese business, pointing to the multiple foreign investment firms that own 60% of the business.
But because of the app’s extraordinary popularity in the US, Beijing and Washington are at odds once more.
An estimated 170 million Americans spend at least an hour each day swiping through TikTok. This includes nearly 60% of teenagers who say they use it “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center. In the US, more than 40% of users say they regularly get their news from it.
