Serena Williams‘ husband and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has recently reignited the conversation around the American ownership of social media platforms, specifically TikTok. The US House of Representatives passed a bill on March 13, against ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok. The bill, which received strong bipartisan support, stipulates that TikTok could face a ban in the country if it doesn’t sever ties with ByteDance. Ohanian shared a video on this matter earlier on Instagram where he expressed his belief that America is under a “strategic threat” from China. The Reddit co-founder added that he doesn’t advocate for banning TikTok; rather, he thinks it should be owned by Americans. The video sparked a flurry of responses from his followers. The 40-year-old reiterated his stance in another video, emphasizing the risk of allowing a foreign entity, particularly one with adversarial relations like China, to control such influential platforms. “Since this TikTok thing is blowing up. We’d all agree, social media has a bigger influence on society than traditional media. When it comes to helping people decide how they feel about a certain topic or an issue, we would not want another country, let alone an adversary, to control the primary sources of media in our country,” Ohanian said. “You cannot be a Chinese company and buy CNN, Fox News, Washington Post, New York Times, pick your choice,” he added. While he doesn’t advocate for banning TikTok outright, Ohanian firmly believes that the platform, which boasts 150 million+ American users, should be owned by Americans. “TikTok backdoored their way into this, but I think our government is leaning in the right direction of doing something to remedy it. And it’s fine. They could be banned outright. I think it’s actually really telling that even if given the option to sell, which as a businessman, that is a better, more fair option, right? At least you get to capture some of that value that you created here in the United States,” Ohanian said. However, Serena Williams’ husband criticized China’s refusal to consider selling as akin to a petulant child’s behavior, indicating broader geopolitical motives. Writing in his caption that ‘China signaling that they want to prevent the sale’ didn’t make sense to him, he said in the video: “The fact that China is signaling that they don’t even want to sell it, yeah, it looks a little bit like a petulant child who’s taking their toys and getting up and leaving. But it also is kind of a tell, because if their interests were purely business-driven, any rational actor would prefer to sell the asset for some amount of money, recoup all that value creation, versus just getting banned and all that value going to zero,” Ohanian continued. “Kind of makes you wonder, why do they actually want to be here in the United States,” he concluded.