A Jewish Takeover of TikTok?

Steven Mnuchin is putting together a consortium to try to buy TikTok, the former Treasury secretary said Thursday, as U.S. lawmakers stepped up the pressure on the popular social-media app.

Mnuchin’s comments come a day after the House voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill that would ban the popular app from operating in the U.S. or force its Chinese owner ByteDance to sell off the company’s U.S. operations within about six months.

“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin said on CNBC. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”

Mnuchin didn’t give details of who he was working with or how his group could raise the funds needed to buy TikTok.

The House bill will now move to the Senate, where lawmakers signaled a more cautious approach on the legislation. President Biden has said he would sign the bill if it reached his desk, and the White House said Wednesday it hoped the Senate would take swift action.

The short-video app has faced scrutiny over the way its algorithm works to select content for users, both on sensitive issues such as teen depression and on global debates such as the Israel-Hamas war. U.S. officials say TikTok’s China-based ownership potentially gives Beijing a way to collect data on Americans and influence public opinion, driving years of start-and-stop efforts to rein in the app. …

CNBCFormer Treasury Secretary Mnuchin: Government spending is what caused inflation

Any deal could be valued at $100 billion or more, narrowing the field of possible acquirers. There would also be likely antitrust concerns if another large social-media player were to seek to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations.

Other executives have also discussed buying TikTok should ByteDance move to sell it. Bobby Kotick has expressed interest to ByteDance co-founder Zhang Yiming, the Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the situation. …

Mnuchin is Jewish, and Kotick is also presumably Jewish. Kotick says he intends to partner with another Jew, Sam Altman of Open AI.

From the Forward:

Worried about antisemitism on TikTok, Jewish federations ask Congress to act

Jewish Federations of North America says TikTok is the ‘worst offender by far’ in driving antisemitism on social media.

The Jewish Federations of North America asked a U.S. congressional committee to approve a bill that would allow the president to ban TikTok or force its China-based parent company to sell it.

“Social media is a major driver of the rise in antisemitism,” the JFNA said Wednesday in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, adding that TikTok “is the worst offender by far.”

The bill in question would require “foreign-adversary controlled apps” to divest from their foreign owners or else lose access to app stores and web hosting in the U.S.

Any application that “presents a national security threat, has over 1 million annual active users, and is under the control of a foreign adversary entity” could be subject to those terms. The bill would allow the president to decide which platforms should be forced to comply with the proposed regulations, but it does not punish individual social media users or censor speech.

How TikTok works

TikTok is different from other social media sites where users mostly see posts from people they follow. TikTok’s algorithm, in contrast, automatically begins playing videos for users that appear to be related to their interests, rather than only responding to topics the user is actively looking for. The app refines what it exposes the user to based on factors like how long the user watches a given video. If you use the app to consume news, as many young users do, watching videos about topics related to Israel or the war could lead the app to rapidly offer up antisemitic or conspiratorial content.

TheWall Street Journal created test accounts for eight hypothetical 13-year-olds and found that within hours, the app was sending apocalyptic, conspiratorial and “highly polarized content, reflecting often extreme pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel positions.” A majority of those posts “supported the Palestinian view.”

Until recently, researchers and lawmakers used a tool on the TikTok app to search for content related to the Israel-Hamas war. What they found was an inordinate amount of pro-Palestinian content. In January, TikTok quietly turned off that particular search feature, making it harder to do this kind of research.

A poll published in The New York Times in December found that 35% of voters aged 18-29 get their news primarily from social media, and 44% use TikTok “often.” That same poll showed that 48% in that age group believe Israel is intentionally killing civilians in Gaza and 55% oppose providing further aid to Israel. …