Comment by bko
17 hours ago
Why would it be sold at a deep discount?
About 45% of the US population uses TikTok and 63% of teens aged 13 to 17 report using TikTok, with 57% of them using the app daily
Hell of a product, there would be a crazy bidding war for that kind of engagement
Because if the Chinese government actually is using it or plans to use it as a propaganda tool there is no amount of money they would accept. The fact that it wasn't sold to a US company offers credibility to the fact that the product is useless to China if it's controlled by a US company and they wanted to keep the data they learned about addiction to themselves. Also probably wanted to build some outrage among young users for the government banning their favorite app
The sell or be banned part, instead of just banned, was most certainly lobbied for by the US social media companies hoping to get it on the off chance it had served its purpose, wasn't as useful as China had hoped, or the slim chance they really did just want Americans to copy dance trends.
In a fire sale the seller has no leverage.
The seller doesn't need any leverage if there are many interested buyers
If you have to get a sale done, it will absolutely create a discount on the price. This is regardless of the interest — all parties know you have a time limit. Yes you may still do a sale quickly and the price may still be at a premium to your last funding round or whatever you want to use as a mark to market, but it will be at a discount to what you could have gotten.
if US government says who is allowed to buy and buyers collude (by pooling financial and political capital together) they can easily not fight a bidding war and lowball instead
Can you give an example of how the most eligible buyers might collude in a way that benefits them all equally, so that this would happen?
For me, it's very hard to conceive of any concrete way that would work. It's a brand, some partnerships, and a network of users that would all go to whatever buyer, and would give that buyer a huge benefit over their existing domestic competitors. So under what circumstances would those domestic competitors allow that instead of aggresively trying to secure it for themselves?
I'm open to believing you, I just don't see what you have in mind.
Why do they need to benefit all equally?
Campaign with the president, offer large amounts of money to the presidents campaign, donate huge sums to a small inauguration party, and then just be picked to get it at a deep discount. The entire point of bribes is that corruption let's you get away with things at a lesser cost. You just screw over everyone else except for the bribe receiver.
only very few rich people can mobilize financial and political capital to pull off tiktok purchase.
Larry Ellison (since he is CIA/MIC friendly and tiktok is already running on Oracle cloud)
Zuck has too much conflict to acquire tiktok, but other oligarchs like Musk/bezos/gates can pull it off, given their recent meetings with Trump
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> if US government says who is allowed to buy
It doesn’t. The courts do. TikTok could be sold to a Hungarian businessman. As long as it can’t be proved they aren’t controlled by China, they should be allowed to reënter app stores.
Are the courts not US government? Do you think there isn't any collusion between Supreme Court and the other branches of government?
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How would that collusion work?
syndication. Pool political and financial capital together to win the bidding from smaller less connected buyers, and share the final ownership
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