On March 20, the US House of Representatives will vote on the future of TikTok. Alex Wong/Getty Images
A month after TikTok lost its licensing dispute with Universal Music, the short video platform’s next controversy follows.
This time, according to the Wall Street Journal, it’s about a forced sale of Tiktok worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Potential buyers include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
In the USA, there is another political decision about Tiktok: It should force Tiktok to make a forced sale within six months, reports the „Wall Street Journal“. This comes after a series of controversies that have made headlines over the past decade since the social media platform was founded in 2016.
Tiktok is by no means scandal-averse, as the recent legal dispute with the world‘s largest music company showed Universal Music for royalties, which Tiktok lost in February 2024. In debates about Tiktok’s existence, touted by former US President Donald Trump, among others, the US state of Montana sat down with one formal Tiktok ban in May 2023. The use of the video portal is restricted in 33 other countries.
Many supporters of a Tiktok ban also came together in Germany. A year ago, Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said during a visit to the US capital Washington that she saw no basis for a general ban on the platform in Germany. Nevertheless, downloading Tiktok on some work cell phones is not possible in this country. So the European Commission prohibits For example, it allows employees to use the app on their work devices.
Read too
Salary data for hundreds of positions: This is how much TikTok employees earn in the US, from data scientists to software developers
The upcoming political decision on Tiktok involves a vote by the US House of Representatives on a proposed law. This will take place next Wednesday, March 20th, and should leave the Chinese company ByteDance no choice but to sell Tiktok. If this forced sale does not take place within six months, the Tiktok app will be removed from Apple and Google’s US stores, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Another problem for the platform: Tiktok involved its own US users via direct message and asked them to exert political influence on MPs. According to the Wall Street Journal, this did the video app a disservice, as it is now expected to receive broad approval in the House of Representatives. However, the law then still has to go through the Senate.
According to the Wall Street Journal, discussions are circulating between business representatives about who would dare to buy the social network. Among them, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is said to have agreed to meet with the long-time, former CEO of Activision/Blizzard named Bobby Kotick last week. Together with others, they are said to have already formulated their desire to take over Tiktok, writes the “Wall Street Journal”.
Read too
More than just chat GPT: These are Sam Altman’s plans for a gigantic AI empire
However, it won’t be cheap for anyone, because the “Journal” reported eleven-figure numbers for buying Tiktok. For OpenAI, a company that researches and develops AI, the purchase will primarily be about the Tiktok database. CEO Altman probably wants to use this to train his own AI.
Kotick, on the other hand, should take on the role of financier by collecting the money for the purchase. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Activision/Blizzard CEO has already met with Tiktok representatives. According to the Wall Street Journal, any model calculation would cost US entrepreneurs “hundreds of billions of dollars” to purchase Tiktok. It is not clear from the report how the companies should dispose of this amount.