The owners of TikTok, the video-hosting platform conducted a secret meeting with the CEO of Walmart amidst sale rumors. TikTok is owned and run by ByteDance, a Chinese company that was founded by Zhang Yiming.
As per the reports available, Yiming met with Walmart CEO, Doug McMillon in a secret meeting conducted in Arkansas.
Meanwhile, TikTok is facing widespread criticism for the kind of content that it circulates on its platform. U.S. officials are making moves to ban TikTok from America. The existing national security concerns remain, and now the video contents are accelerating the move.
The information available from insider sources cite that this was the not first-time Walmart’s name was associated with TikTok. Two years back the retailer giant had made moves to partially own TikTok.
During that time, the nation’s President was Donald Trump whose administration pressurized the retail company to sign a partnership with Oracle. The American multinational tech corporation Oracle was handling the US operations of TikTok, then.
There were recent reports that ByteDance was planning to make a huge sale in its operations and platform handling in the U.S. The government of the United States responded on this that it will never support such an action and will firmly oppose all related business deals.
TikTok was asked to comment on the rumors of its U.S. sale and the platform turned down all reports. It said that the talks in the air about a possible big sale were 100 percent false and it had never even conducted such a discussion.
The company was asked again after the news of its CEO meeting with Doug McMillian, the company has not however provided a proper response.
The spokesperson to whom the question was asked seemed reluctant to respond. Although, the spokesperson thanked everyone for reaching out on hearing the news and proceeded to add that the company does not respond to rumors
News reporters and publishers attempted to collect information from Walmart as well as Oracle. But it ended up being in vain as neither companies did not return any emails or responded to the calls. Unlike TikTok, it also did not provide any comments through a spokesperson.
There is another report that, a sale was most probable and ByteDnace was denying it as part of business dealings. The same report said that the company was trying to create an image of playing to get hard.
A source remaining unnamed due to legal reasons cited that according to the company’s public posturing, it says that it was not doing a sale. The source added that the private posture was that the company need time to get a deal together which was the one and the only way to get complete value for the divestment was by saying that they were not selling it.
The CFIUS (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) through one of its officials went against the latest comments that China provided on the recent events.
The official said that the Chinese government does not have any say in assets under the control of the U.S. in the U.S. jurisdiction. The official added that the US could force a sale at any time and the smarter move would to be wait and see to whom they will sell it.
Walmart’s decision to tie in with TikTok comes as a part of its new propaganda to allure more young shoppers towards it. The deal that is assumed to have been discussed will result in Walmart having a stake of 7.5 percent in the US unit of TikTok.
It is also predicted that Doug McMillion, the Walmart CEO, will take a position as a member of TikTok’s US unit Board of members.
Yet, what naked all these assumptions far away from being considered is another report which says the nation will completely ban TikTok sooner.
Just the previous week, Shou Chew, the CEO of TikTok appeared before the US congress for his testimony. TikTok having more than 150 million active users in the U.S., was accused of user privacy rules of the nation and of illegally collecting data from the users.
The accusation was that the app was collecting data from US users and making it available to China.
Chew said that the app was independent of China and that it was not even available in mainland China. He continued that the headquarters of the app was in Los Angeles and Singapore and has above 7,000 employees alone in the U.S.
He further said that the company did come across many concerns about an existing potential that there was unwanted foreign access to US data and another one that was about the manipulation of TikTok’s US ecosystem.
Chew reassured that the app has never even, at least once, made an approach as a method to dismiss or trivialize any of the concerns and it has addressed all the concerns with real-time actions.
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The testimony went on that TikTok has no operations in China and the government was forcing it to provide data over-leveraging the fact that the app’s business was under its jurisdiction.
If this happens there are many possibilities that the Chinese government has access to all of the users and related data that the app has in its possession.
The arguments and reassurance that Chew provided were not taken into account by the majority of the assembly members.
John Curtis, the Republican representative from Utah said that he does not think Chew has been able to win the trust of the people on the fact that their data is safe with the app. He added that he also does not believe that TikTok has accountability at all in the Chinese spying and illegal data collecting practices.
McMorris Rodgers, the Republican representative from Washington addressed the Americans who were watching the testimony and stated that TikTok was a weapon by the Chinese Communist Party that spies on the users.
She added that the app was controlling the content that they watch and was trying to manipulate them and exploit the upcoming generations.
The parent community has raised concerns more than once regarding the kind of videos that their kids watch on TikTok. The videos often include abusive acts, body shaming, offensive humor, and related.
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