Congress recently passed a bill that, pending approval by the Senate and President Biden, would force TikTok's parent company to either divest the social media platform or face a ban in the U.S. Marc Berkman, CEO of the Organization for Social Media Safety, partners with TheStreet to discuss what it could look like if the U.S. takes control of TikTok.
Full Video Transcript Below:
J.D. DURKIN: What could a U.S. controlled TikTok look like? Also, keeping in mind, we're having this conversation after former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin not that long ago said, hey, I'm even looking at pulling together a group of domestic U.S. investors who could lead the charge if divestment from ByteDance is a possibility.
MARC BERKMAN: Yeah I mean, I think for the average public user, it's going to look the same. Who's going to own it? I don't want to get into that speculation game. Uh, it's clearly a very profitable company. A lot of users on it for a lot of time. It's the, features of TikTok are very good at keeping its users on for many hours so that they can see ads. And that has been effective. But I think from the average user standpoint, you know, after this bill is passed and there's a divestiture, they're not going to notice any real difference in its functionality.
J.D. DURKIN: Are there safety measures I wonder that you would like to see implemented at TikTok or those that are very popular and are being proposed in good faith, even maybe on a bipartisan way that might assuage many of the national concerns?
MARC BERKMAN: That's an excellent question. So they've been working on this issue with CFIUS, the organization within the federal government that monitors business with foreign governments. So they've been working on this structure to divest as a practical matter and have the data all stored in the U.S. This has been a long, ongoing conversation and process. So that's a piece of it. Is that sufficient? You know, according to some reporting there that we've seen, BuzzFeed put out an article a little while back that might not be enough in and of itself. And these concerns remain. And again, the members of Congress receiving these classified briefings have those concerns. So I don't know if there's enough to resolve the issue without a divestiture.
