Apple has the finances to buy just about anything, but with TikTok there are more reasons than money that mean it won’t buy the social media platform.
For a company that has so much success, Apple is far from immune to failure — and sometimes repeated failures. For whatever reason, Apple seems incapable of launching a social media platform, despite trying, so buying one should be a possibility.
Right now TikTok isn’t exactly up for sale to the highest bidder, but it’s close – as long as that bidder is America. No question, if Apple wanted to buy TikTok, it could even though Bloomberg estimates on Sunday that it would cost up to $60 billion.
Just as how Apple will never buy Disney no matter how many pundits tell it to, the price is not the problem, though. Not even when the price of buying Disney has been estimated at north of $175 billion.
The case against buying Disney, however, is more nuanced than buying TikTok. Both would have issues over how the companies would operate within Apple, but Disney could at least temporarily carry on exactly as it is doing.
TikTok can’t. Under the terms of the US ban, TikTok can only be restored if an American company runs it entirely. Apple could doubtlessly hire people currently working for TikTok, but it would still be starting up a whole new operation.
And it would be setting up that operation in a market it has so far shown little competence. And it would be setting up that operation with a social media platform that will not be free of competition even after it’s bought.
That’s because TikTok as it stands is already limiting search results in a way that seems to be done to appease the more right-wing of the US’s politicians. Various searches to do with, for instance, abortion, are already returning fewer or no results in the US compared to other countries.
Apple has to operate within the law, so if this type of censorship is made mandatory, it will have to do it. But if Apple censors, it will be Apple that gets a bad press rather the US government.
Moderation in all things
Then even if there is no political or legal pressure applied externally on Apple’s TikTok, there will be immense pressures inside it. TikTok requires extensive moderation, and that costs a great deal of money.
Which is really why Meta and others have abandoned any moderation. There is of course an element of currying favor with the new US administration, but the cash saving is immense.
It would be for any company, so Apple could save a lot of money and effort if it bought TikTok and allowed anyone to say anything on it, without the remotest oversight. But when controversy blows up — and it is when, not if — it will again be Apple that gets the bad press.
TikTok would be easy to buy, but Apple would really be buying a world of hurt that it doesn’t need and has no experience handling well. A $60 billion price tag would not be the problem but buyers’ remorse would be.
Separately, Apple has radically cut down the number of firms it buys in the last few years. Its biggest-ever acquisition remains Beats, which cost $3 billion — 20 times less than TikTok would cost — back in 2014
