Last week, a bipartisan House bill was introduced that could mean the end of popular video app TikTok in the U.S. The proposed legislation would ban TikTok in the states if its parent company, ByteDance doesn’t sell its interest in the app. ByteDance is a Chinese company and U.S. lawmakers are concerned about TikTok’s connection with China and fear that the company collects personal data from TikTok subscribers.
Kevin O’Leary says that he won’t let TikTok get banned in the U.S.
The investor known sarcastically as Mr. Wonderful on ABC’s long-running Shark Tank television show said about TikTok, “This is worth billions, it’s one of the most successful advertising platforms in social media today. All my companies use it, I’ll buy it.”
TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek told The Hill, “This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.” President Joe Biden already said on Friday that if the bill makes it out of Congress, he will sign it.
By monthly average users, TikTok is the fourth largest social media platform in the world. It currently has over 1 billion monthly average users. Since its launch in 2016, the app has been installed over 3 billion times.
