Amazon made a bid to buy TikTok on Wednesday.
Jeff Bezos, who attended the Trump inauguration and has a personal relationship with the Trump White House, submitted an offer to buy the social network and the White House has confirmed that their received the letter.
Former State Department whistleblower Mike Benz says that “this retroactively makes the past 6 months make sense.” Like it was all a game to concentrate this power into the hands of a tech oligarch.
ByteDance, the only Chinese company that currently owns TikTok (not to be confused with the Chinese government) will still retain 19.9% of TikTok, which is just below the 20% threshold limiting Chinese ownership outlined in Congress’s law. There is no word if them and the other investors want to sell a controlling stake to Amazon.
President Trump’s executive offer to keep TikTok in the U.S. expires this weekend so something has to happen before then.
The short-term ban that took place in January did cost TikTok users. The company has begun to lose young users to Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts.
