Amazon has put in a last-minute bid to acquire all of TikTok, the popular video app, as it approaches an April deadline to be separated from its Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States, according to three people familiar with the bid.
Various parties who have been involved in the talks do not appear to be taking Amazon’s bid seriously, the people said. The bid came via an offer letter addressed to Vice President JD Vance and Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Amazon’s bid highlights the 11th-hour maneuvering in Washington over TikTok’s ownership. Policymakers in both parties have expressed deep national security concerns over the app’s Chinese ownership, and passed a law last year to force a sale of TikTok that was set to take effect in January.
Considering every single other attempt to get Bytedance to sell it has failed, I’m sure this one will definitely work. /s
I am wondering if the sale of TikTok is more about Trump getting some company to buy it where he can control the content
It would be exactly what dictatorships do
Control all media
Meh. If you’re the sort of person who cares, you probably stopped using TikTok when they started sucking up to Trump. If you still use it, you probably support Amazon, too.
Why is this legal? Isn’t there an authority that watches over fair competition in the USA?
- I don’t believe that it would apply in this case, as tiktok isn’t the only video media sharing platform in the USA. If amazon was buying all of video media platforms, that would be cause for concern.
- Yeah, there was. America also explicitly voted that they didn’t want fair competition at all. We’re just getting what we deserve.
I don’t think that you understand this very well. You definitely don’t need a monopoly in the video media platform space in order to restrict competition to an unfair degree. For example, the forced sale of Fox Sports to Bally in 2021 by the courts in order to retain a small modicum of competition in broadcasting despite the existence of other networks. Maybe you should look into it a bit more before you declare it’s not an issue?
Ole Bezos is jealous he doesn’t have his own social media platform.
He kinda does. Amazon owns twitch
Oh i didn’t know that! That does count.
That being said, if he owned tiktok, he would have access to an algorithm to push an agenda. Whereas twitch doesn’t really have the same kind of thing.
Amazon is a terribly exploitative company, but… they might actually be better than Oracle, and AFAIK Bezos isn’t in bed with Trump like Ellison is.
Oh o spaghettio
