With any deal, the devil is in the details. And acquiring TikTok is no different.
The U.S. government—both the Biden and the Trump administrations—has been concerned about the video platform’s China-based parent company ByteDance, which makes it susceptible to the Chinese Communist Party’s control, and pushed for a change of ownership.
When it comes to purchasing TikTok, with its approximately 2 billion users, including an estimated 170 million Americans, the key is the algorithm, according to Wyoming entrepreneur Reid Rasner. He has made an offer of almost $50 billion to ByteDance.
“Without the algorithm, TikTok doesn’t exist, and it won’t ever be the same. We need the algorithm. We need a clean break from ByteDance and China,” he told The Epoch Times in a Feb. 25 interview.
After all, Rasner said, “without the algorithm, you can’t replicate what they’ve done,” and another Chinese company could take it and create a new app that poses the same threats to U.S. national security and user safety. China could still access data and mine it to influence users.
Rasner said that if his offer is accepted by ByteDance and China, the application will include features to keep children safe.
He said that he has talked with families who say they were negatively impacted by TikTok and promised “some exciting additions” to the platform if the deal is completed. Rasner declined to go into detail on the changes but said there will be more information “in the coming days.”
Parental consent would be a feature on the revised application. The buck stops with parents, Rasner said.
“I think parents need to be parents, first of all,” he said. “And I can tell you that the platform will have a place for children if their parents want them to, but it will not be the same platforms for those children that currently exist,” he said.
TikTok as currently run, is “a true national security threat,” he said.
Advocates of TikTok have countered by saying the platform has helped small businesses. TikTok has run a barrage of ads with testimonials from small businesses saying that the application has been key to their success.
“I’ve talked to hundreds of people in the past week who use TikTok for their business. This is their small business. This is how they earn money, this is how they make sales,” Rasner said.
He said that if he acquires TikTok, he will respect not only user data but also freedom of speech.
Alongside a group of investors, Rasner, a wealth manager, has offered $47.45 billion to acquire TikTok—which would be over $3 billion more than what Elon Musk paid to acquire Twitter. He said it is a “fair” and “strong” offer.
Rasner declined to say how ByteDance has responded to the offer, citing that his legal counsel is in talks with the company and Chinese officials.
The deadline to acquire the platform is April 5.
While a law Congress passed last year to ban TikTok took effect on Jan. 19—one day before President Donald Trump took office—Trump extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok by another 75 days on the day he was sworn in.
If Rasner’s deal is accepted, TikTok would be headquartered in Wyoming.
“We’re going to create a technological footprint in the Mountain West states,” he said. “We’re going to power the servers, the data storage facilities, and TikTok right here with Wyoming’s amazing clean, abundant energy—our liquid natural gas.
“Our new, nuclear developments that are happening are clean Wyoming coal, and we’re going to supplement the entire Mountain West economy and the American economy by bringing this home. And it’s truly something special. It’s going to create a brand new technological frontier of the Mountain West states.”
