Shark Tank investor says he would buy TikTok to prevent the platform from getting banned in the U.S.
Last week, a bipartisan House bill was introduced that could mean the end of popular video app TikTok in the U.S. The proposed legislation would ban TikTok in the states if its parent company, ByteDance doesn't sell its interest in the app. ByteDance is a Chinese company and U.S. lawmakers are concerned about TikTok's connection with China and fear that the company collects personal data from TikTok subscribers.
The bill was introduced by introduced by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.); the pair are the top lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. If the bill becomes law, ByteDance would have more than five months to divest itself of TikTok. If ByteDance stands pat, TikTok would become illegal to distribute from a U.S. app storefront or a web housing platform.
But according to The Hill, there is a deep-pocketed investor out there who said on Friday that he would buy the platform if it is going to get banned. Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary, who sold The Learning Channel to Mattel for $3.2 billion in 1999, said on Fox News that he will buy TikTok if the platform is about to get banned. "Not going to get banned, 'cause I’m gonna buy it," O'Leary said on Fox News' show "The Story." He continued by saying, "Somebody’s going to buy it, it won’t be Meta and it won’t be Google, 'cause…regulator [will] stop that."
Kevin O'Leary says that he won't let TikTok get banned in the U.S.
The investor known sarcastically as Mr. Wonderful on ABC's long-running Shark Tank television show said about TikTok, "This is worth billions, it’s one of the most successful advertising platforms in social media today. All my companies use it, I’ll buy it."
TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek told The Hill, "This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs." President Joe Biden already said on Friday that if the bill makes it out of Congress, he will sign it.
Back in August 2020, then President Donald Trump started a campaign to get ByteDance to sell TikTok to a U.S. company. U.S. firms like Microsoft, Oracle, and Walmart were linked to a potential purchase of TikTok, but as the 2020 presidential election drew closer, Trump started to lose interest in the battle.
By monthly average users, TikTok is the fourth largest social media platform in the world. It currently has over 1 billion monthly average users. Since its launch in 2016, the app has been installed over 3 billion times.
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