In case you somehow didn't know, Mark Zuckerberg hates TikTok. Like, he really detests it. He says it's because the Chinese-owned TikTok censors content and is a threat to democracy. What he probably won't say though is that he's just envious because he once tried to buy it.
Images courtesy: Reuters
During a speech at Georgetown University last month, the Facebook CEO had harsh criticism for TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance. "While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the U.S.," Zuckerberg said. "Is that the internet we want?"
"Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values," he said. "There's no guarantee these values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese."
Now that all sounds well and good, but Facebook isn't exactly a bastion of virtue. And then there's the fact that, according to reports from Buzzfeed and Bloomberg, Facebook almost bought TikTok before ByteDance.
Three internal sources confirmed to the publications that, back in 2016, Facebook was in talks with Shanghai-based Musical.ly to try and buy the app, in order to gain a foothold in the Chinese market. That clearly never came to fruition, because ByteDance later bought the app in 2017, and merged it into their own platform to create the viral TikTok sensation.
So when Zuckerberg talks about how bad TikTok and ByteDance are now, it sounds less like a protest against the violation of freedom of speech and more like a man crying about sour grapes.
"Facebook is so pissed that TikTok is the one thing they can't beat that they've turned to geopolitical arguments and lawmakers in Washington to fight their fight," a former high-ranking Facebook employee told Buzzfeed.