All everyone could talk about over the weekend was how TikTok was shutting down. The app briefly went dark ahead of a law that would effectively ban it in the US. The company got a reprieve when US President Donald Trump gave it a 75-day extension. Now, Trump hopes that industry figureheads like Elon Musk and Larry Ellison might be open to buying TikTok from its owner, ByteDance.
Selling TikTok
The law scheduled to take effect on January 19 would have effectively forced TikTok to shut down. That is, unless the company were to sell itself to a US-based company. Currently, ByteDance, a company based in China, owns TikTok.
There are national security and privacy concerns over its ownership. The US government is worried that data from TikTok is being sent back to China. This would allow TikTok to spy on US citizens. This is why the US government wants an American company to own the majority stake in TikTok.
Trump responded affirmatively when asked if he is open to the idea of Elon Musk buying TikTok. He made his comments during a press conference with Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, SoftBank CEO Masa Son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman where he also floated the idea that Ellison could buy the company.
In front of the media, Trump said, “Larry, let’s negotiate in front of the media. What I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it, and give half to the United States of America. Half, and we’ll give you the permit. And they’ll have a great partner, the United States.”
China’s not happy
China imposes many restrictions on selling or exporting technologies it deems as “core technologies” to other countries or foreign companies. TikTok’s proprietary algorithm is considered one of those “core technologies”. This is why TikTok selling itself or its majority stake to a foreign entity would be problematic.
The current proposal is to sell 50% of TikTok to the US through a locally-based company. Mao Ning, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rejected the idea, stating that companies should decide this independently based on market principles. Musk and Ellison definitely have the resources to buy TikTok, but the question is whether or not they’ll be able to.
Musk bought social media platform Twitter back in 2022, which was later renamed X, although some argue that the platform has lost a great deal of its value following Musk’s acquisition.
