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HONG KONG – In the United States, the fate of social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter has wavered as they have been accused of encouraging abusive speech and organizing malicious political influence campaigns.
But in China, the titans of social media are getting bigger and richer.
Bytedance, the creator of news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, the Tik Tok video sharing service and a fleet of other entertainment applications, is in talks to raise new funds that would value the company at $ 75 billion. asked for anonymity to discuss confidential discussions.
The Japanese conglomerate SoftBank is one of the investors involved in the negotiations, said one of them.
A $ 75 billion valuation would make Bytedance one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world – Uber's value was recently valued at $ 76 billion. This would also give Bytedance a financial weight comparable to that of some high-tech leaders listed on the stock market. Baidu, maker of the dominant search engine in China, has a market capitalization of about $ 80 billion.
A Bytedance spokeswoman declined to comment. Discussions with SoftBank were reported earlier by The Information.
In the six years since the company's inception, Bytedance's applications have become a major attraction for users – and advertisers – of the largest online population in the world. And the company also wants to conquer phone screens far beyond China.
Today, half a billion people around the world use either Tik Tok or its Chinese edition, Douyin, every month, according to Bytedance. By comparison, Instagram, where short, homemade videos are also a major draw, has more than a billion users.
Coming from China, where the government maintains strict and ever-changing controls over information, Bytedance has survived unique turbulence as it grows. Last year, the company had to suspend the update of its Toutiao news application after the Chinese regulator of the Internet accused it of disseminating unsavory information. Last April, a Bytedance application to share jokes and wacky videos was completely ordered offline.
Indonesian authorities have briefly banned Tik Tok this year from hosting "negative" content.
Zhang Yiming, founder and CEO of Bytedance, offered a contrition demonstration after the joke application, Neihan Duanzi, was closed. He apologized for the company's inability to respect "fundamental socialist values" and thanked the Chinese government for allowing the rapid development of technology companies.
Zhang also said Bytedance will expand its content monitoring team to 10,000 from 6,000.
Follow Raymond Zhong on Twitter: @ zhonggg.
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