WSJ: Fmr Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Working With Sam Altman to Buy TikTok as U.S. Govt Threatens Ban
Chris Menahan
The US government is moving to ban TikTok over pro-Palestine content outperforming pro-Israel content and force the sale of the Chinese-owned company to a group of Zionist investors headed by former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.
From The Wall Street Journal, “TikTok Crackdown Shifts Into Overdrive, With Sale or Shutdown on Table”:
Legislation that would ban TikTok in the U.S. or force its sale is hurtling toward a vote in the House following months of behind-the-scenes efforts on Capitol Hill. The new push caught the service off-guard, ratcheting up interest from possible buyers and raising the possibility that one of the most popular apps in the country could soon be shut down.
[…] The legislation calls for Beijing-based parent ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok or face the platform being banned from app stores and web-hosting services in the U.S. ByteDance would have a little more than five months from the enactment of the bill to comply. TikTok, which is accessed by more than 170 million Americans, sees this as an effective ban, said a spokeswoman. The company says separating the U.S. portion of its app wouldn’t be practical and would undercut the appeal of the content app, which is global in nature.
Already, U.S. tech and media titans are circling. In recent days, some executives have discussed buying TikTok if ByteDance agrees to sell. Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of videogame publisher Activision, has already approached ByteDance Executive Chair Zhang Yiming to express interest, according to a person familiar with the situation. Any price tag is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Kotick is looking for partners. At a dinner at an Allen & Co. conference earlier this week, Kotick floated the idea of partnering to buy TikTok to a table of people that included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, according to people familiar with the situation. OpenAI could use TikTok to help train its AI models if a partner such as Kotick could raise the capital for such an acquisition.
This is an insanely authoritarian attack on free speech and the “free market” and it’s being done explicitly to advance the interests of Israel, not America, the WSJ reports:
[Rep. Mike Gallagher’s R-WI] efforts [to ban TikTok] appeared to stall in 2023, but were revived in part by the fallout from the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, according to people close to TikTok and people close to lawmakers. TikTok’s users quickly inundated the platform with videos about the attack and Israel’s war on Gaza. Some lawmakers said TikTok appeared to favor pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel content, and renewed calls to ban the app in the U.S.
TikTok’s spokeswoman said that the videos that lawmakers are concerned about were created by its users, and the company argued it has been fair in moderating pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian videos.
“Oct. 7 really opened people’s eyes to what’s happening on TikTok” and its “differential treatment of different topics,” said [Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL)], adding that the coming election also fueled concerns. “People are concerned about interference using TikTok.”
There you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth.
Israel demands all criticism of their genocide campaign in Gaza be censored worldwide and then South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signs a bill aimed at outlawing criticism of Jews and Israel and the US government moves to ban TikTok in one of the most authoritarian anti-First Amendment measures ever taken without a care in the world for the consequences or the Bill of Rights.
Two and a half centuries of free speech needs to come to an end because “God’s chosen people” cannot be criticized.
Is anyone other than Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) going to stand up to this insanity?
If Congress bans TikTok, they will be acting just like the Chinese communists who have also banned TikTok . . . Why not just defend the first amendment? pic.twitter.com/7eAvKNPdvc
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 8, 2024
