Dan Kitwood
TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance ( BDNCE ) on Sunday denied reports that it had been approached by a U.S. company executive about a potential deal to acquire the short-video platform, Global Times reported.
The company noted that its founder Zhang Yiming has he had no such discussions with anyone, the report said added.
Last week, a top Republican lawmaker said he would seek a House vote on a bill that would force ByteDance ( BDNCE ) to sell the app or face a ban in the United States. The move came after the Energy and Commerce Committee voted to approve the bill by a vote of 50-0.
Bobby Kotick, former CEO of Activision, had floated the idea of buying TikTok to potential partners. Kotick had approached Zhang Yiming to express interest, according to a person familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal he reported on Sunday. The price is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, according to the WSJ report.
“After the confirmation, company founder Zhang Yiming never discussed the matter with anyone,” ByteDance said, according to the Global Times report.
Meanwhile, former US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he fears that banning TikTok would only boost Facebook’s Meta Platforms (META), CNBC reported.
“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook an enemy of the people,” Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said in a media interview.
Trump’s opinion on TikTok differs from that of US President Joe Biden, who noted that he will sign a bill to ban the social media app if Congress approves it.
Meanwhile, Trump said he thought TikTok remained a national security issue due to its Chinese ownership, but deflected attention to Facebook, adding that the platform has similar privacy and security issues, the report added. .