Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday told his employees that the plan to ban Chinese social media platform TikTok in the United States would set a “really bad long-term precedent” and that he was “really worried” about it, BuzzFeed News reported.
Zuckerberg’s comments came ahead of US President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transactions with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and WeChat. The order will come into effect after 45 days.
In a meeting, Zuckerberg was asked if the social media giant was interested in acquiring TikTok. While the Facebook founder refused to talk about business dealings, he expressed his concern about recent developments. “I just think it’s a really bad long-term precedent, and that it needs to be handled with the utmost care and gravity whatever the solution is,” Zuckerberg said. “I am really worried… it could very well have long-term consequences in other countries around the world.”
Zuckerberg has in the past considered acquiring TikTok’s predecessor Musical.ly. His company Instagram recently launched a new function similar to TikTok called Reels. However, he maintained that the new ban would only be moderately beneficial. Though he sympathised with the security concerns of the Trump administration, Zuckerberg also hinted that Facebook could be targeted in a similar fashion by a country in the future.
“A lot of people are out there saying that this helps Facebook and my reaction to that is only in the most narrow sense,” the Facebook CEO said. “Yes, they are a competitor this year, and this month, next month maybe our engagement will go up. Maybe it will make Reels a little bit easier just to roll out. But you don’t run a company for the next month or the next quarter.”
On August 5, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance Ltd, said sale to Microsoft was the only way TikTok could prevent itself from being banned in the US. Microsoft had on August 3 said it was in talks with ByteDance to buy parts of TikTok.
The same day, Trump, after changing his mind on banning TikTok, gave Microsoft over a month to acquire it. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said his firm hopes to reach a deal with TikTok by September 15.
Chinese apps were also banned in India in the aftermath of the Galwan Valley clash, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed. The deaths of Indian soldiers had sparked calls for the boycott of Chinese goods and business. In June, the Centre banned 59 Chinese apps citing threat to national security and sovereignty. Last week, 47 applications, which were clones of the banned apps, were also blocked. China had called India’s move to ban the mobile apps a violation of World Trade Organization rules.
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