The prospect of TikTok needing a U.S. buyer increased this week after the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require the social media app’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app or face a ban.
On a 352-65 vote on Wednesday, the House showed unusual bipartisanship and passed a bill that would force the app to decouple from China or be banned in the United States. The app’s connection to the Chinese Communist Party has raised serious national security concerns that have motivated the legislative action.
While the bill’s fate is uncertain in the Senate despite President Joe Biden pledging to sign it, there needs to be some consideration about what will happen to the app if the bill becomes law and TikTok is sold to a U.S. investor.
Social media companies such as Meta and Google are dominated by the Left. As was evidenced by the 2020 election, they have a sizable influence on what content people see and their political perceptions. A similar concern was obvious with Twitter until it was bought by Elon Musk and rebranded as X.
TikTok has an enormous user base of 170 million in the U.S. Its potential for influencing the population at large is vast, which means Silicon Valley tech companies with an overrepresentation of left-wing views must not be allowed to buy it, lest censorship and liberal propaganda replace Chinese government propaganda.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
On Thursday, former President Donald Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin revealed he is working to gather an investor group to buy TikTok away from ByteDance. In the interests of freedom of speech and social influence, an investment group like this is what is needed to protect TikTok from subversive left-wing efforts to use the app to curtail the influence of conservatives.
Republican and conservative billionaires who care about protecting free speech should be calling up Mnuchin and ensuring that any bid from Big Tech or progressive billionaires is matched and exceeded. Our democratic process depends on it.
