Updated: April 26th, 2023
Last month, Marc D’Amelio – the patriarch of TikTok’s royal family – shared that he is contemplating buying the short-form video app. On March 18, Marc took to Twitter to announce that he is “putting together a group of investors to pursue the purchase of TikTok.”
With Marc’s tweet amassing over 58.7k views and hundreds of likes, social media users were seemingly on board.
But over the past month, Marc’s plans seem to have changed.
At The Information‘s Creator Economy Summit, Marc was asked about his intention to purchase the app. He explained that while raising $6 million for D’Amelio Brands gave him insight into brand funding, TikTok is pricey.
“It’s [purchasing TikTok] very expensive…We’ve raised a lot of money for D’Amelio Brands, and we have the connections to do it,” he admits to Information reporter Kaya Yurieff. But with the social media platform worth billions of dollars, Marc goes on to note that the best path for TikTok is ensuring government protection and avoiding legislation banning the app.
While it remains unclear who exactly Marc’s connections are, there is no denying that the D’Amelios are all-powerful in the TikTok world.
At 150 million followers, Charli remains the second most followed person on the app behind Khaby Lame. Meanwhile, Dixie is also a force to be reckoned with, racking up over 57 million followers since starting TikTok in 2019.
Marc’s bid for TikTok came at a time when the app was under threat across the United States. Last month, the Biden Administration demanded that Chinese tech company, ByteDance, sell its share of the social media platform. And if the company refuses to divest, the US government has threatened to ban the app across the board.
This ultimatum is the most recent instalment in the ongoing battle between TikTok and the US government, which has seen the app banned on federal devices and user data transferred to a US-based cloud platform. But as concerns around national security and data collection continue to mount, who is to say that a ban on personal devices is out of the question?
It’s a shame Marc couldn’t come to TikTok’s rescue!