A look at Facebook's past views on China and how they changed as TikTok became popular; sources: Facebook held serious acquisition talks with Musical.ly in 2016
In 2016, Facebook wasn't just watching short video from afar — sources say Zuckerberg personally weighed buying Musical.ly, the app that became TikTok. Instead, ByteDance closed the deal, paying as much as $1B for Musical.ly a year later.
The report undercuts Facebook's framing of TikTok as a foreign intrusion: the company's own leadership courted the asset in 2016 before losing it to ByteDance, so the competitive threat is partly one Facebook chose not to buy.
Zuckerberg's public positioning on China — from earlier courtship to security-minded criticism — now reads as a reversal timed to TikTok's rise rather than a consistent policy.
Second-order effects
ByteDance faces the sharpest knock-on effect: the CFIUS review targets retroactively the same acquisition Facebook passed on, meaning the asset Facebook once valued at up to $1B could be forced apart or restructured under US regulatory pressure.
Rival platforms' short-video strategies get fresh ammunition: Facebook can argue its own copycat products serve national resilience, turning a product failure into a lobbying argument against ByteDance.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, cross-border acquisitions of consumer apps become reversible political decisions: a deal legal when signed can be reviewed years later once geopolitics shift, raising the discount every US buyer and Chinese seller must apply to such transactions.
The trend: US competition with Chinese-owned consumer apps is increasingly decided by retroactive regulatory review rather than market outcomes, with past suitors like Facebook now positioned on the side of the reviewers.
“Four years ago, Mark Zuckerberg failed to buy the Chinese company that became the basis of TikTok. Now he's demonizing it to make the case against regulating Facebook,” reports @RMac18: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Facebook did everything it could to try to get into China, and once held acquisition talks with the Chinese app that formed the basis for TikTok. We trace FB's past views on China and how they have changed as the company has gone to battle with TikTok. https://www.buzzfeednews.co…
Interesting. “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.”
What a hit by @RMac18 — “Three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg tried to buy the Chinese company that became the basis of TikTok. Now he's demonizing it to make the case against regulating Facebook” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Fascinating details here on how Facebook is taking on TikTok having failed to acquire http://musical.ly/ four years ago. Also, signals the company's shift away from China. Bonus: Mark Zuckerberg has a TikTok account 👀 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Before TikTok was TikTok, it was http://musical.ly/. And when it was http://musical.ly/, Facebook tried to acquire it. Interesting given Facebook's harsh anti-TikTok rhetoric. Scoop, via @RMac18 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Classic Zuck dealings: he reportedly tried (unsuccessfully) to buy http://Musical.ly in 2016 — it was later bought by ByteDance and folded into TikTok https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Reminds me that, also in 2016, Facebook tried to buy another Asian app that was racking up the downloads: Snow (then a Snapchat clone) It's almost like Facebook will try to buy any social app that gets traction anywhere in the world 😏 https://techcrunch.com/...
Scoop from @RMac18: Facebook was in talks to buy TikTok predecessor http://musical.ly/. After failing to buy it, or successfully clone it, Zuckerberg began to talk about TikTok as a foil to American values https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... via @RMac18