The news of a possible acquisition of Tiktok by the former CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick, has gained widespread attention on the internet and is currently trending.
TikTok, a social media app released in September 2016, is mostly popular for the short videos users make and share on the platform.
Notable for its addictive nature, TikTok allows users to create personalized videos with features like filters, music, backgrounds, and stickers, making their videos fun and unique.
Users with a high percentage of engagements and followers are known as influencers who predominantly communicate with their followers in video formats.
As one of the giants in the social media space, TikTok has topped with a major download volume of over 4.7 million.
Is Tiktok now banned in US?
Concerns about the safety of the user's data have been raised over time, leading to the current investigation of TikTok’s parent firm, ByteDance, which is based in China.
The majority of US senators believe that ByteDance might sell user data to the Chinese government, which is against the company's user data privacy policy.
Following senators' concerns, a potential ban has been implemented, popularly termed the US Congress TikTok ban.
With this bill in place, the US Congress has moved a motion for TikTok to be banned in the US or to force its potential sale to another body or organization where user data would be perceived safe from data traders and governments like that of China.
President Biden had previously stated his support for a US ban on TikTok, or for ByteDance to transfer ownership of TikTok to a US-based parent company.
Tiktok acquisition by CEO of Activision
Regarding user security concerns, Bobby Kotick, the erstwhile CEO of Activision, declared interest in buying TikTok should ByteDance decide to sell the video-centered social media space.
Kitock, who left Activision late last year following its acquisition by Microsoft for $69 million, has resurfaced in the news with a decision to purchase the social media platform from ByteDance.
Reports of the price tag for the purchase of TikTok run into hundreds of billions of dollars and would land Kitock a new place among social media CEOs.
Wall Street Journal reports that Kitock will go in on the app with other top partners. One of these is Open AI CEO Sam Altman.
“TikTok could be very influential to training Open AI’s AI models because it has quite a large turnout of users and data,” Kotick told Altman over dinner for boutique investment bank Allen & Co.
Tension is already building up among concerned parties as the bill that would potentially force TikTok out of the US received a vote of 50 - 0 in last week's committee sitting.
Notwithstanding, the stroke that may likely break the camel's back lies with Congress as they are set to vote on Wednesday, and this vote will require a two-thirds majority to pass.
In all this, nothing has been recorded on the part of the users, and it is yet to be ascertained how this move will affect the users of this platform when it is either banned or passed on to another parent firm.