The YouTuber started off sounding like he was joking, but it seems he’s actually made some headway now.
MrBeast has given his followers a little update after he announced his plan to ‘buy TikTok’ to stop it from being banned in the US.
So, is TikTok really on the chopping block?
ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, has just four days to sell the app or face a ban in the US due to claims of ties to the Chinese government.
US officials and lawmakers are worried that ByteDance could access the data of around 170 million American users, which could be at risk if China demands that information.
The US Justice Department has stated that TikTok is a significant national-security threat because of its parent company.
In response, President Joe Biden enacted a law last year requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok, or else the app would be banned in the US. The deadline for the sale is January 19, which is just a day before Donald Trump is set to take office again.
ByteDance has pushed back, arguing that the law is unconstitutional, but they’ve also said they won’t sell the app.
What’s MrBeast’s take on the potential ban?
With many TikTok users worried about losing the platform, MrBeast tweeted what looked like a lighthearted joke about stepping in to save it.
On January 14, he wrote: “Alright, I’ll buy TikTok so it doesn’t get banned.”
With a net worth of around $1 billion, as reported by Celebrity Net Worth, the YouTuber is in a good position to buy the app; however, that doesn’t guarantee that ByteDance would be on board with selling it.
Nonetheless, MrBeast expressed his enthusiasm for the project, posting an update on Twitter just a few hours after his initial tweet.
He mentioned: “Honestly, I’ve had a ton of billionaires contact me since I tweeted this, so let’s see if we can make it happen.”
MrBeast hasn’t disclosed which billionaires are part of this mysterious project, but fans are having a field day with their jokes about what the content creator might do with the app.
One Twitter user quipped, “I just bought TikTok and I’m giving it away to one lucky subscriber,” poking fun at some of MrBeast’s famous challenges.
So, what if TikTok doesn’t get sold? If the January 19 deadline passes without a sale and the ban kicks in, new users won’t be able to download TikTok anymore.
Current users can still access the app, but they won’t receive any new updates, which means it could eventually become unusable.
As the threat of a ban looms, TikTok users are checking out a new app called RedNote, another short-form video platform from China.