Meta shares rise after report that Biden may ban TikTok

Shares in social media campaigns Tie up and Meta After-hours trading jumped on Wednesday after it emerged that the Biden administration was considering banning TikTok in the US unless Chinese tech giant ByteDance divests its stake.

Shares of Snap rose nearly 7% and Meta rose more than 2% after The Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok was threatening a possible U.S. ban if ByteDance did not comply with the Biden administration’s proposals.

Both Snap and Meta face stiff competition for users’ attention from TikTok and have introduced their own short video products to compete. According to research from Insider Intelligence, in 2023, US adults are projected to spend an average of 55.8 minutes per day on TikTok, compared to 30.8 minutes on Snapchat, 30.6 minutes on Meta-owned Instagram and 30.2 minutes on Facebook. owned by Meta. .

Last week, the White House expressed support for a recent Senate bill that would give the Biden administration the ability to ban TikTok in the U.S.

U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern that TikTok, because it is owned by China, poses a potential national security threat, and U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, R-Virginia, recently said that “this competition with China is about who dominates the technology spheres, it really is. where the hub of national security is in the future.”

ByteDance has contested the allegations and said in a statement on Wednesday: “If the goal is to protect national security, divestment will not solve the problem: the change in ownership will not impose any new restrictions on data flow or access.”

The statement said: “The best way to address national security concerns is to transparently protect American data and user systems with the robust third-party monitoring, verification and validation we already have in place.”

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