Sale of TikTok in the United States: Several businessmen on the lookout

Hibapress

Businessmen in the United States are preparing to enter the race to acquire TikTok after the US Congress voted in favor of a sale of the Chinese social network within a year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday .

In this context, real estate tycoon Frank McCourt announced that he is setting up a consortium to buy the video sharing platform, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, indicates the daily.

In a press release, this former owner of the Californian baseball club Los Angeles Dodgers indicated that he intends, if this transaction is successful, to reorganize TikTok to allow users to have better control over their identities and digital data.

Last April, the American Congress adopted a text which forces the parent company of TikTok to sell its application within twelve months, under penalty of being banned from the country.

This legislation signed by President Joe Biden has aroused the interest of several businessmen who want to acquire the American operations of the Chinese network which has more than 170 million users in the United States.

These investors also include the president of O’Shares Investments, Kevin O’Leary, and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

According to the Wall Street Journal, potential buyers of the Chinese application will face a major challenge: determining the value of the transaction which could range between $20 and $100 billion.

Accused of “compromising” the national security of the United States by allowing China to access the data of American users, the social network reacted to the American approach by filing a complaint against the Biden administration. For him, the law adopted by Congress “violates freedom of expression, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution”.

“For the first time in history, Congress has passed a law that permanently bans one platform of expression nationwide, and prohibits every American from participating in any community single online platform with more than a billion people worldwide,” the Chinese company’s lawyers pointed out in the complaint.

TikTok still believes that national security concerns are not a sufficient reason to restrict free speech and that the onus is on the federal government to prove that such restriction is justified.

The US federal government and dozens of states have already banned the use of TikTok on work devices.