TikTok dismissed reports that China is considering selling the social media platform to Elon Musk.

U.S. law stipulates that ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, must sell the app to a U.S. company by Jan. 19 or face a ban due to national security concerns. 

On Tuesday, TikTok responded to a recent Bloomberg report claiming China was mulling a sale to Musk to keep operations from shutting down. 

“We cannot be expected to comment on pure fiction,” a TikTok spokesman told the Washington Examiner. 

Musk is the owner of X, a massive social media platform with millions of users in the United States. He also has strong ties to the incoming Trump administration, which has opposed the TikTok ban. 

Musk himself has opposed the ban, saying that although it would likely help X gain followers, he doesn’t support “banning things” because it limits freedom of expression.

“I’m generally against banning things. … It would help Twitter if TikTok was banned because then people would spend more time on Twitter and less time on TikTok. But even if it would help Twitter, I would be generally against banning things,” Musk said during a BBC interview in 2023.

TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms in the U.S., boasting roughly 170 million monthly active users. China’s communist government has a “golden share” in the platform’s owner, ByteDance, leading to the Biden administration’s concerns that Beijing is using TikTok for nefarious purposes against the U.S. Opponents of banning the app argue doing so would violate free speech and First Amendment rights. 

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TikTok has challenged the ban in the Supreme Court, citing free speech concerns.

The court could decide the case as soon as Wednesday but has signaled it is likely to uphold the ban unless the social media platform divests from Chinese ownership.