Sitting in the UK, I’m trying hard to be bothered about the story about TikTok being sold but some people who should know better really are.
If you’ve missed it, the US Government have passed a motion to demand TikTok’s owners sell the platform together with its algorithm. Give the relatively short time 10-month proposed timeframe, this would see any sale as cut price.
The alternative is for TikTok to stop being available in the US. Given the US remains the largest economy in the world this is significant news for the company.
Why could TikTok be sold?
There’s a couple of reasons why TikTok have found themselves in this position. Some have speculated that it could be because campaigners skillfully used TikTok to embarrass Trump by grabbing event tickets to sell out rallies and then not going, meaning Trump was met with an audience of empty chairs.
Certainly, the Republican rebukes to TikTok have made the platform a Democrat platform rather than a Republican one and as a result its become a political football.
The other reason is that TikTok is seen as a Chinese company and at a time when the world is pulling up the drawbridge to the idea of the global village this makes sense.
But what about the UK?
If TikTok gets banned in the US it gets banned in the US. It won’t be banned in the UK. This will hit UK companies who are using the platform to sell to the States. But for the public sector who want to talk to residents to tell them about places to go, recycling messages and pothole news this really doesn’t matter a hill of beans.
However, what may be a side effect is that those people who don’t like or understand TikTok will feel vindicated in their views.
But those people aren’t the audience for TikTok. But there‘s 23 million people in the UK who are.
Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons Seattle Municipal Archives, CC BY 2.0