- Online video platform Rumble has offered to buy and operate TikTok in the US.
- Officials are demanding that its parent company sell the platform or it will be banned.
An American company has offered to buy TikTok to prevent the Chinese-owned app from being banned in the United States.
A letter from Rumble CEO Chris Pavloski appeared on the company’s Page X on Tuesday, stating that its online video platform is ready to “acquire and operate TikTok in the US.”
Pavloski laid out his case further by explaining that Rumble would securely store data in the US with its recently launched cloud service that will “defend the free and open Internet.”
The letter comes as the House of Representatives threatened to ban TikTok if its parent company ByteDance does not sell.
A letter from Rumble CEO Chris Pavloski appeared on the company’s X page on Tuesday, stating that its online video platform is ready to “acquire and operate TikTok in the US.”
“In the event that ByteDance divests its ownership in TikTok, Rumble is ready to join a consortium with other parties seeking to acquire and operate TikTok within the United States,” Pavloski wrote.
The letter comes a day after Rumble announced the launch of Rumble Cloud, which Pavoski said aims to combat censorship and advocate for a “free and open Internet.” fox business reported.
The CEO also said that his The company values ”freedom of speech and the First Amendment,” which is what many TikTok users have said will be lost if TikTok is banned in the US.
Rumble, however, has received investments from several right-wing figures such as Vivek Ramaswamy and Peter Thiel.
House representatives said Monday they are moving forward with the bill that would require ByteDance to sell TikTok, and leadership will vote on the measure Wednesday.
The letter comes as the House of Representatives has threatened to ban TikTok if its parent company ByteDance does not sell.
If passed, ByteDance would have six months from the bill’s enactment to divest itself of TikTok and other apps and avoid a nationwide ban.
Elon Musk shared his thoughts on the bill in an X post on Tuesday: ‘This law isn’t just about TikTok, it’s about censorship and government control!’ “If it were just TikTok, it would just cite ‘foreign control’ as the problem, but it doesn’t.”
Former President Donald Trump also expressed opposition to a possible ban.
‘Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok who love it. “There are a lot of little kids on TikTok who would go crazy without it,” Trump said in a phone interview with CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box.’
‘There are a lot of good things and a lot of bad things on TikTok. But what I don’t like is that without TikTok you are going to make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with many media outlets.’
TikTok has become a major issue in the 2024 presidential campaign.
The platform has about 170 million users in the United States, most of whom are younger, a demographic that both parties are desperately trying to court ahead of the November general election.
It has become especially difficult for campaigns to reach younger voters as they move away from traditional platforms like cable television.
Biden’s 2024 campaign officially joined TikTok last month, even though it raised its own national security concerns about the platform, banned it on federal devices and on Friday backed legislation that could lead to its ban.
