Meta shares fell around 5% on Monday after former US President Donald Trump raised concerns that Meta would be empowered if Chinese-owned social media app TikTok is banned in the US.
In an interview to CNBC, he said, “Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people.”
“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” he added.
Shares of Meta also fell 1.2% on Friday when Trump called Facebook a “true enemy of the people!”
This comes months after Meta’s shares rose to a record high after it posted its biggest-ever profits in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s so-called year of efficiency. The losses also eroded Zuckerberg’s net worth, as the world’s fourth-richest person after he lost around $7.7 billion on the day, according to estimates.
Though Trump in the interview said that he considered TikTok to remain a national security risk, he has softened his stance. The social media company is owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance and is an international sensation with youngsters across ages logging on to the platform to post short videos.
Critics have expressed concern that the social media giants would share private user data at the request of the Chinese government. If the app is banned in the US, ByteDance will be forced to disclose such information if asked to by experts in the US.
In 2020, Trump-led administration had unsuccessfully tried to have TikTok removed from app stores in the US.
The US House is set to vote this week on a bill that would give TikTok roughly five months to separate from its China-linked parent company or else app stores in the United States would be banned from hosting the app on their platforms. If passed by the Congress, US President Joe Biden said he would sign the TikTok bill into a law.
