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Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said he wants to buy TikTok.
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Part of his plan involves scrapping the original algorithm and rebuilding the app.
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This is very difficult to do, critics say.
Earlier in March, during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Steven Mnuchin, the former US Treasury secretary, said he was building a team of investors who could buy TikTok within six months.
That time frame came about because of a bipartisan bill passed on March 13 that would have banned TikTok unless the app was sold to a US buyer within 180 days. The ban stems from concerns among some US lawmakers that the Chinese government has too much control over companies and could in turn demand that entities like TikTok divulge vast amounts of personal data or use the platform to influence policy abroad.
So far, several rich and powerful people have come forward as potential buyers. Mnuchin is one of them. But his plans are already facing a lot of skepticism.
For one thing, TikTok – with over 170 million active users in the US – is expensive. According to one estimate, the app is worth $100 billion, CNN reported.
Consider how Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, struggled to raise the necessary capital to buy Twitter for less than half the price.
There’s also Mnuchin signaling he could bypass China’s red tape in exporting technology by rebuilding the app from scratch, The Washington Post reported.
“The application has to be rebuilt in the US, it has to be American technology,” Mnuchin told CNBC.
In other words, Mnuchin wants to buy TikTok without the key ingredient that makes the app so valuable and addictive — its algorithm.
Some are very skeptical of this proposal.
Mnuchin told potential investors that buying TikTok without its code could make the app cheaper to buy, two sources familiar with Mnuchin’s proposal told the Post. However, it’s what’s under the hood that has made the app so successful and able to cultivate more than a billion global users.
Matt Perault, a professor at the University of North Carolina and former director of Facebook’s public policy team, told the Post that many tech companies want to build an algorithm like TikTok.
“All the biggest companies have put a lot of money and engineering talent into that issue and they’ve fought for it,” Perault told the Post. “If Steve Mnuchin thinks he can do that and succeed where a lot of successful companies have struggled, good luck.”
Mnuchin didn’t go into too much detail about how he plans to rebuild TikTok. He told CNBC that “a lot can be done in six months.”
Exactly what or how much is not clear. But TikTok, which launched internationally in 2017, certainly didn’t get to where the app is now in six months.
“This is like rebuilding Facebook — that’s the task here,” a source familiar with Mnuchin’s performance told the Post. “It can’t be done in 180 days — or even years.”
Mnuchin and a TikTok spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment sent over the weekend.
Read the original article on Business Insider