TikTok’s Kevin Mayer Is Plotting A Course Through The Fog Of War
In the middle of this flurry of business negotiations and political rhetoric, TikTok has announced plans to build a $500m (£375m) data centre in Ireland, where it will store videos, messages and other data generated by European users from the short-form video-sharing app. Mayer has also issued an 800-word defence of the TikTok which stated that without the platform, US advertisers “would again be left with few choices”, dismissing Instagram Reels, a new video service from Facebook that will launch in the US in early August, as a “copycat product”. More recently, Mayer has been instrumental in allocating a $200 million fund to support “ambitious American creators who are seeking to turn content creation into their livelihoods”, adding that the fund is likely to grow to a staggering $1 billion in the U.S. over the next three years, and will total more than $2 billion globally within that timeframe.
All of which demonstrates the kind of coolness under fire that has rarely been exhibited since the days of FDR and Churchill during the darkest days of World War II.