TikTok Needs to Sell While It Can Still Get Top Dollar
The platform’s Chinese owners should look to make the best of a bad situation and divest the app while it has maximum value.
TikTok is popular, but other social media apps are standing by to pick off its users.
Photographer: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images
It’s panic stations at TikTok. Last week’s lightning-fast creation of a bill that would force the platform’s divestiture or bar it in the US, and the legislation’s almost instantaneous passage by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has the Chinese-owned app scrambling to avoid a ban that could be only months away.
The full House will vote on the bill on Wednesday. With President Joe Biden indicating he would sign the legislation should it reach his desk, TikTok’s dwindling hope is that it can get the bill held up in the Senate or stop it in the courts on the argument that it violates users’ First Amendment rights.