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I keep seeing this type of comment here, like a sell is the obvious thing to do. Why? Selling / divesting TikTok US under these circumstances would surely not f
by yibg 2y ago
I keep seeing this type of comment here, like a sell is the obvious thing to do. Why? Selling / divesting TikTok US under these circumstances would surely not fetch the best price. In addition they would immediately create a global competitor that have the same product. Why would ByteDance the company or its investors want that?
- rchaud 2y agoNot to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars after this rigmarole? The incoming head of state doesn't exactly have a great track record of seeing through on promises to pay and is threatening tariffs against all and sundry. Anybody with that kind of financing readily available is throwing it at AI and not another social network, no matter how useful it might be for domestic propaganda.
- threeseed 2y ago> Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars Why would the US government be involved in paying tens of billions ? The idea is that ByteDance would sell it to Meta, X, etc and would be a private transaction.
- baobun 2y agoHow separate is Twitter and the government really from today?
- yibg 2y agoWhich makes no sense. Meta wouldn’t sell “meta Uk”, data product, algo and all to a competitor for 20 billion or whatever the number floating around is.
- threeseed 2y agoIt doesn't have to be a competitor. They simply have to divest the US operation. Just like happens in China and in many other countries.
- yibg 2y agoWhoever they sell to becomes an immediate competitor though no? They’d get the software, US users and algo.
- rchaud 2y agoDivesting the US operation would be pointless, the goal of the law is to control the algorithm, and that isn't something that the US office has access to. If they did they could simply be poached like Uber did to Waymo.
- cbzbc 2y agoSanctions regimes still exist.
- rchaud 2y agoIt's a distinction without a difference. Musk is effectively an agent of the state, with billions in subsidies he wants to protect, and a Chinese auto market he is desperate to be allowed into. The CCP would not miss out on taking advantage of the situation and demanding trade concessions for agreeing to sell. US government would absolutely be involved in raising the necessary finance, as banks won't be bending over backwards to lend Musk money for another speculative venture.
- absolutelastone 2y agoI don't see why any of this must be so. Couldn't they just move or sell to any other country on the planet not on the adversary list? Congress doesn't appear to care if TikTok survives or not. TikTok bans are not news.
- kelnos 2y agoThey could, but why would they want to? Consider: * If ByteDance divests their US TikTok operations, they create a new competitor that could potentially out-compete them in other (non-US, non-Chinese) markets. * Whatever amount of money they get for this divestiture would be much lower than what the business is worth to ByteDance (when your options are sell or shut down, potential buyers will not feel the need to bid high). * ByteDance's US TikTok operations are certainly of non-financial value to the Chinese government. That value is likely orders of magnitude higher than their financial value to ByteDance. Selling that user base is probably not preferable to shutting down. Influence campaigns are certainly easier to run on a platform you own, but certainly those campaigns are already running on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Why add another platform that they can't control where they have to run influence campaigns?
- Agentus 2y ago> Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars after this rigmarole? Don’t need trust when you have the second most powerful state entity backing you. Corporate America has a complete jammed full history of its interests getting screwed over by foreign entities only for the US government to step in either with military force or some coercive measure resulting in a corrective action. Im sure China is well aware of this playbook and are probably apt to copy it too.
- afiori 2y agoYou might overestimate the tendency of states that are not the US to invade others
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- stale2002 2y agoWell yeah, of course Tiktok isn't going to get the best price now that it has tried and failed to play chicken against the US government. They should have seen a law like this being passed coming years ago. That is more than enough time to divest. Too late now for them, I guess. They can take the financial hit for being so bad faith.
- hollerith 2y agoWhy is Tiktok US no longer worth $10 billion or so? Why wouldn't American investors still want to buy it? My guess is that American investors would want to buy it, but want the algorithm, but ByteDance is not willing to sell the algorithm out of fear that sharing it would degrade its competitive position outside the US.
- stale2002 2y agoIf a 100-200 billion dollar valuation company gets sold for 10 billion dollars then they would be agreeing with my point, not disagreeing with it.