The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States requested that TikTok's owners sell their stake in the social media app or face the possibility of TikTok being banned in the US, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The app is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. and has been named a national security risk by both the Biden and Trump administrations.
According to the report, ByteDance's ownership is split between international investors at 60%, employees at 20% and founders at 20%, although "the founders’ shares carry outsize voting rights." A TikTok spokesperson said the sale would not "impose any new restrictions on data flows or access" and suggested that the US government should instead better protect user data. The US Senate recently unveiled a bill giving the government authority to ban TikTok if needed. The app has already been blocked from all federal government devices in the US.
