TikTok’s most senior operations executive, Australian expat V Pappas, has said the ByteDance-owned app could survive a US ban and warned that plans to force Chinese investors to divest its shares were a symptom of a dangerous “fractionalisation” of the internet.

The viral video app is facing a barrage of regulatory scrutiny, both in Australia where the Albanese government is banning TikTok from government phones, and in the United States, which has ordered Chinese shareholders to sell their shares or risk a ban in its fastest-growing, most lucrative market.