Facebook tried to buy Musical.ly, the company which was eventually bought by Chinese tech giant ByteDance and merged into rival social media platform TikTok, according to BuzzFeed and Bloomberg.
Sources told BuzzFeed Facebook wasn't able to close the deal, while Bloomberg reports it walked away over Musical.ly's young usership and Chinese ownership.
Mark Zuckerberg has been on the offensive against TikTok in recent months, criticizing the platform for reportedly censoring content.
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Facebook once tried to buy Musical.ly, the Chinese lip-syncing app which was eventually acquired by Chinese social media giant ByteDance and merged with its app Douyin to form viral video app TikTok, according to reports from BuzzFeed and Bloomberg.
Three sources familiar with the talks told BuzzFeed's Ryan Mac that Facebook spent the second half of 2016 trying to buy the Shanghai-headquartered Musical.ly in an attempt to break into the Chinese market. These sources said that while the talks were "serious" they never came to frutition with Facebook unable to close the deal.
Bloomberg's reporting differs, with a source saying that Facebook walked away out of "concern about the app's young user base and Chinese ownership."
The reports add a slightly different tenor to Mark Zuckerberg's recent remarks about TikTok and China.
The Facebook CEO has been sounding the alarm against TikTok, criticizing the platform for censoring its users and scrubbing content that might displease the Chinese government. TikTok has denied censorship.
At the same time US senators are starting to scrutinise ByteDance and TikTok more closely. Earlier this month the company skipped a senate hearing on China and big tech, and were consequently "empty-chaired."
During a public speech at Georgetown University in October, Zuckerberg said: "While our services like WhatsApp are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the China-based app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these same protests are censored, even here in the US."
He added: "Is that the internet we want?"
Sources told BuzzFeed that Zuckerberg's attacks on TikTok are cynically motivated.
"Facebook is so pissed that TikTok is the one thing they can't beat that they've turned to geopolitical arguments and lawmakers in Washington to fight their fight," a former high-ranking Facebook employee told BuzzFeed.
Instagram yesterday launched a short-form video feature called "Reels" in Brazil, which has been widely characterized as a clone of TikTok. After TechCrunch editor Josh Constine called the feature a "remarkably decent TikTok clone," Instagram boss Adam Mosseri commented: "Love the phrase 'remarkably decent,' high praise for sure given how much you love TikTok."
Love the phrase ‘remarkably decent,’ high praise for sure given how much you love TikTok, 🙌🏼 — Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) November 12, 2019
Facebook and TikTok were not immediately available to comment when contacted by Business Insider.
When contacted by BuzzFeed TikTok declined to comment, but a Facebook spokesperson said the company has "always been transparent that we want to get into China, but we could never come to an agreement. The suggestion we are only recently for free expression ignores the entire history of the company and the products we've built."
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TOMATO_ON_URANUS on November 13rd, 2019 at 15:05 UTC »
... isn't it a threat to democracy because its owned and run by the Chinese, giving the CCP a backdoor into all the devices its installed on?
I'm no fan of the Zucc, but if he bought it in full wouldn't it become part of a US company and therefore not a problem in that sense?
astrnght_mike_dexter on November 13rd, 2019 at 14:09 UTC »
Clearly no one in this thread read the article. Zuck is saying TikTok is a threat to democracy because it's Chinese owned and is allegedly censoring anti-Chinese content. It's not hypocritical for him to say this because he tried to buy it before it was Chinese owned and presumably if Facebook owned it then they would not be censoring content along nationalist lines. This headline sucks and is just written this way to try to manufacture outrage.
Fake_William_Shatner on November 13rd, 2019 at 12:58 UTC »
“A threat to Democracy— that I wanted to cash in on but now I want to cast shade while we duplicate its functionality in our own products.” He said silently to himself to simulate how humans talk to themselves silently.