The platform made the disclosure as part of its legal challenge against a law forcing its sale in the US.

TikTok says the mechanism would have allowed the government the “explicit authority to suspend the platform in the United States at the US government’s sole discretion” if it did not follow certain rules.

A draft “National Security Agreement”, proposed by TikTok in August 2022, would have seen the company having to follow rules such as properly funding its data protection units and making sure that ByteDance did not have access to US users’ data.