NEWS

Soulja Boy offers to buy TikTok: “How much y’all want?”

Soulja Boy has shared his interest in purchasing TikTok after US Congress passed a bill that could lead to the app’s potential ban.

This week (April 23), US Congress passed the 21st Century Peace Through Strength Act that could force TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the platform within nine months. If not, TikTok will be banned from US markets and removed from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store nationwide. US President Joe Biden signed the legislation yesterday (April 24).

After the news broke, the Atlanta rapper took to X/Twitter to show his frustration around the decision. “I can’t believe y’all just gon let them ban TikTok like that,” he wrote. “And y’all think it’s funny. If they do it to this app, they can do it to any app or site. Not cool [for real], y’all will see later.”

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A fan replied to the rapper saying he could use other social media platforms, to which Soulja said: “You maybe don’t see it now but TikTok is more important than any other platform right now that’s why they’re trying to ban it trust me.”

He also replied to another tweet detailing that TikTok won’t be banned if ByteDance can sell the stakes in time. “That’s still not right [to] sell it. For what – so they can change and mess up the algorithm? [Shake my head], leave the app alone,” Soulja tweeted.

He concluded his run of tweets by directly tweeting TikTok, asking them “How much y’all want for [it]? I’ll buy it.”

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After Congress passed the 21st Century Peace Through Strength Act, TikTok shared a statement calling the law “unconstitutional”.

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The company added: “This ban would devastate seven million businesses and silence 170million Americans. As we continue to challenge this unconstitutional ban, we will continue investing and innovating to ensure TikTok remains a space where Americans of all walks of life can safely come to share their experiences, find joy, and be inspired.”

The CEO of TikTok Shou Zi Chew echoed this sentiment, saying the legislation is a “disappointing moment” for TikTok. “Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to prevail again.”

@tiktok

Response to TikTok Ban Bill

♬ original sound – TikTok – TikTok

To date, over 30 American states, Canada, and the European Union have separately banned the app from use on government-owned devices because there are concerns the app could be a security risk. India banned the app nationwide in January 2021, while Taiwan and Afghanistan did the same in 2022.

The bill was included as part of a $95billion foreign aid package, including military assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. In response to the package, TikTok wrote on X last week (April 18): “It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the US economy, annually.”

Soulja Boy has relied on social media for his success. In the 2000s, he was one of the first artists to go viral with a dance craze on YouTube to catapult him onto the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Crank That’. Recently, he has had numerous songs go viral on TikTok – including ‘She Make It Clap’ and ‘Rick And Morty’.

In other news, TikToker Trefuego owes Sony Music over $800,000 in damages after using a copyrighted sample without permission on his viral song ‘90mh’. The label cited the song as a “flagrant and deliberate infringement” of Japanese composer Toshifumi Hinata’s (Hinata) 1986 track ‘Reflections’.