Steven Mnuchin, the former US Treasury Secretary, says he wants to rebuild Tiktok. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he wanted to buy Tiktok.
Part of his plan is to scrap the original algorithm and rebuild the app.
That’s really hard to do, critics say.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
In early March, Steven Mnuchin, the former US Treasury Secretary, said in a Interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he was putting together a team of investors who could buy Tiktok within six months.
This period of time results from a bipartisan bill passed by the House of Representatives in the USA on March 13th: This proposed a ban on Tiktok if the app, which originated in China, was not sold to a US buyer within 180 days.
The ban comes amid concerns from some U.S. lawmakers that China’s government exerts too much control over companies and in turn may demand that companies like the video portal hand over large amounts of personal data or use the platform to influence politics abroad influence.
So far, several wealthy and powerful people have come forward as potential buyers. Mnuchin is one of them. But his plans are already met with great skepticism.
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Former Treasury Secretary Mnuchin wants to buy the platform without the Tiktok algorithm
On the one hand, Tiktok is expensive – with its around 30.19 million monthly active users worldwide. According to one estimate, the app is worth 100 billion dollars (93 billion euros). CNN reported.
Consider that Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, had to raise the capital necessary to buy Twitter for less than half that price.
Additionally, Mnuchin has suggested that he could bypass China’s technology export bureaucracy by building the app from scratch, as the “Washington Post“ reported.
“The app has to be rebuilt in the US, it has to be US technology,” Mnuchin told CNBC.
In other words, Mnuchin wants to buy Tiktok without the key component that makes the app so valuable and addictive – i.e. the algorithm.
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How can you make money on Tiktok with 1000 followers?
Mnuchin isn’t saying much about how he plans to rebuild Tiktok
Some are very skeptical of his proposal. Mnuchin has told potential investors that buying Tiktok without his code could make the app cheaper, two sources familiar with Mnuchin’s proposal told the Post. Still, it’s exactly what’s under the hood that has made the app so successful and has been able to cultivate more than a billion users worldwide.
Matt Perault, a professor at the University of North Carolina and former head of Facebook’s public policy team, explained that many tech companies are striving to develop an algorithm like Tiktok.
If Steve Mnuchin thinks he can do that and succeed where many successful companies have struggled, then good luck.
“All the big companies have put a lot of money and technical talent into this and have struggled to do it this way,” Perault said. “If Steve Mnuchin thinks he can do that and succeed where many successful companies have struggled, then good luck.”
Mnuchin hasn’t said too much about how he would like to build Tiktok. However, he told CNBC that “a lot can be done in six months.” What or how much that is exactly is currently unclear.
“It’s like rebuilding Facebook — that’s the job here,” a source familiar with Mnuchin’s pitch told the Post. “This can’t be done in 180 days – or even years.”
Mnuchin and a Tiktok spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider US over the weekend.
Read the original article in English here.