TikTok says US refused to engage in serious settlement talks
Al Jazeera
ByteDance said US government prefers to shut down than work on an ‘effective solution’ to protect US users.
TikTok and Chinese parent ByteDance have urged a United States court to strike down a law they say will ban the popular short video app in the US on January 19 next year.
In details released on Thursday, the two companies said the US government has refused to engage in any serious settlement talks since 2022.
Legislation signed in April by President Joe Biden gives ByteDance until January of next year to divest TikTok’s US assets or face a ban on the app used by 170 million Americans. ByteDance says a divestiture is “not possible technologically, commercially, or legally”.
ByteDance recounted lengthy negotiations between the company and the US government that it says abruptly ended in August 2022. The company also made public a redacted version of a 100-plus page draft national security agreement to protect US TikTok user data and says it has spent more than $2bn on the effort.
The draft agreement included giving the US government a “kill switch” to suspend TikTok there at the government’s sole discretion if the company did not comply with the agreement and the draft says the US demanded that TikTok’s source code be moved out of China.
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