President Biden has approved a bill that could lead to the eventual ban of TikTok in the United States. The legislation was tied to a foreign aid bill to provide money to Ukraine and Israel.
More than 170 million Americans use the social media app, which features short videos. The company says it has 7,000 employees in the U.S.
The measure gives China-based ByteDance nine months to sell the company, with a possible additional three months if a sale is in progress.
If the company chooses not to sell TikTok, the popular social media app will be banned in the U.S.
TikTok said it will challenge the legislation in court.
"Rest assured, we are not going anywhere," the TikTok CEO said in a video message after Biden signed the bill into law.
If the ban goes into effect, the app would not automatically disappear from phones but it would be removed from the app stores.
That means new users would not be able to download it and updates would not be able to be sent to users in the United States.
The U.S. isn't the first country to ban TikTok. India banned it in 2020 after a border clash between the militaries of the two countries, according to the Associated Press.
Google created YouTube Shorts and Instagram created Reels to capture users.
