With any deal, the devil is in the details. And acquiring TikTok is no different.
The U.S. government—both the Biden and the Trump administrations—has been concerned about the video platform’s China-based parent company ByteDance, which makes it susceptible to the Chinese Communist Party’s control, and pushed for a change of ownership.
When it comes to purchasing TikTok, with its approximately 2 billion users, including an estimated 170 million Americans, the key is the algorithm, according to Wyoming entrepreneur Reid Rasner. He has made an offer of almost $50 billion to ByteDance.
“Without the algorithm, TikTok doesn’t exist, and it won’t ever be the same. We need the algorithm. We need a clean break from ByteDance and China,” he told The Epoch Times in a Feb. 25 interview….