TikTok Sale-or-Ban Law Spurs Promise of Legal Fight: Explained

President Joe Biden signed into law a bill this week that requires Chinese ByteDance Ltd., TikTok Inc.‘s parent company, to sell the app in less than a year or face a ban in the US. The action sets up a likely legal battle between the app—which has vowed to fight the policy in court—and the US government.

The ban comes in response to concerns that the Chinese government could peddle propaganda to TikTok’s reported 170 million US users through its powerful algorithm, or access sensitive US user data collected by the app. The Committee on Foreign Investment in ...