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Tech: TikTok's countdown has started, do they care?

Author
Paul Stenhouse,
Publish Date
Sat, 27 Apr 2024, 11:12am
Photo / File
Photo / File

Tech: TikTok's countdown has started, do they care?

Author
Paul Stenhouse,
Publish Date
Sat, 27 Apr 2024, 11:12am

The TikTok clock has started, and TikTok is saying it's not even looking at it. 

Parent company ByteDance posted overnight that it doesn't have any plans to sell TikTok. Reuters is reporting that a source says it would prefer to just shut the app down in the US, their algorithm is their secret sauce, so selling the app would be selling the algorithm.

Get ready for a showdown. TikTok's CEO says the law and the US Constitution is on their side.

The US says it has concerns TikTok could be used by the Chinese government to spy on Americans, which TikTok strongly rejects. To complicate matters, 60% of Bytedance is owned by investment Firms including large (and likely influential) US investors. 
 
Meta's pumping billions more into AI 

The company had planned to spend up to $37 billion this year but now says it could be closer to $40 billion. They certainly have the cash though, profit was $12.4 billion for Q1, more than double Q1 last year. 
A staggering number of people are dependent on Meta, with Zuckerberg saying at the earnings call more than 3.24 billion people use one or more of its apps every day. WhatsApp is a big driver of that usage. He also made a plea to shareholders to trust that the money will come at some stage with AI & Metaverse products, just as it has for Reels and Stories which initially didn't make any money. 

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