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If the algorithm hasn’t served you up with enough speculation around the future of TikTok, President Trump is more than happy to add more. Reuters reports the president of the United States told those aboard Air Force One a few days ago the government was in talks with four different parties interested in buying the popular social media platform.
When asked aboard Air Force One this week if a deal was going to happen for TikTok soon, the president responded “It could.” adding “We’re dealing with four different groups, and a lot of people want it … all four are good,” but did not name any of the potential buyers.
The future of the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok has looked tumultuous with the United States poised to ban the app over security concerns. It’s been a rocky ride with President Trump initially threatening to level the banhammer in his first term. Since then we’ve seen appeals from Chinese owner ByteDance, but the United States Supreme Court has said the decision rests with the president, who has since taken a less aggressive stance against the company.
Rather than get rid of TikTok altogether, the plan seems to be to remove the Chinese influence. Having a platform reach the insane global popularity that TikTok has garnered is a bit like bottling lightning. Pushback from users combined with the tasty idea of the United States owning such a potentially lucrative asset have helped pivot talk from banning the app, into buying it. The Chinese company has been given directives to sell or find itself banned in the United States.
Towards the end of January, Trump was talking about having someone like Elon Musk or Larry Ellison buy the app, but share half with the government. The idea seeingly being that, with the government allowing the app to run, that entitles them to a share of its profits. I’m pretty sure that applies to most things though, and is usually called taxes.
It’s no surprise potential buyers are putting their hands up for the popular app that could be worth upward of $50 billion. Trump didn’t name any buyers outright, but Reuters lists Frank McCourt, the former Los Angeles Dodgers owner as one such interested party. Rumours have also been pointing to the controversial former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, or even a company like Microsoft, which laid off 650 staff last year.
But this all depends on if ByteDance decides to sell. The company may just choose to snub the United States entirely rather than give up a portion of its assets. We’ll just have to wait and see whether or not U.S. citizens can wave goodbye to Chinese spies while doing the latest dance trend on this app, or another.
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Kurt Indovina
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