The demand, confirmed by TikTok late Wednesday, marks the newest escalation in U.S. governmental stress on the app more than possible safety dangers that critics have raised primarily based on its ties to China. 

It comes just after a string of proposals emerging in Congress that target TikTok to varying degrees, and just after a thriving bid to ban TikTok on federal government devices passed final year. 

The newest news also comes ahead of  TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s scheduled testimony just before the Residence Power and Commerce Committee subsequent week.

Chew stated divesting wouldn’t resolve any safety issues and that he enterprise has doubled down on its ongoing plans to monitor and separately retailer information from U.S. customers.

“Divestment does not resolve the trouble: a transform in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on information flows or access,” Chew stated in a current interview with The Wall Street Journal. 

Chew declined to comment on no matter whether ByteDance, TikTok’s parent enterprise, would be open to promoting the app to a U.S. enterprise. Other folks questioned how probably a divesture is. 

Hannah Kelley, a analysis assistant in the technologies and national safety plan at the Center for a New American Safety, stated she does not think that ByteDance will agree to divest from TikTok.

“This has been the sticking point in CFIUS negotiations for more than two years now—how to mitigate the identified U.S. national safety issues, specifically concerning information flows and access, brief of complete divestment,” Kelley stated, referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a federal inter-agency panel.

We’ll have a lot more on the possible impacts of a TikTok ban at TheHill.com.