TikTok is not for sale: Musk is not getting his hands on the app
The clock is running out for TikTok as the Supreme Court justices’ deadline to decide its future approaches. By January 19, TikTok’s parent company must sell its stake in TikTok to a party in a country not considered a “foreign adversary,” or be banned altogether.
TikTok is firm on one thing: it’s not selling to Elon Musk.
The U.S. government’s war against the social media platform TikTok wages on. On January 19, the Supreme Court justices will decide whether ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, must sell its stake to a government-approved entity or be banned from operating in the U.S. A recent article from Bloomberg reported that China was considering selling TikTok to the world’s wealthiest man and tech mogul, Elon Musk. The platform has refuted that claim, with a TikTok representative telling Variety, “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
TikTok has continually stated that it will not sell its U.S. operations and has filed an emergency appeal seeking to block the federal law. TikTok and ByteDance have argued that the law would violate the First Amendment rights of its 170 million users. While the justices have taken this into account, they believe that the perceived threat to national security takes precedence over the First Amendment. “The law doesn’t say TikTok has to shut down,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated during a hearing on January 10. “It says ByteDance has to divest.”
One person it would appear not to be divesting to anytime soon is Musk. Musk already owns X (formerly known as Twitter) which he bought for $44 billion in 2022. Last year, the platform was valued at a fraction of that price, at $9.4 billion. Musk is a close ally of the President-elect, Donald Trump, whose personal views on the platform have constantly shifted in recent years.
Trump’s flip flop on TikTok
In July 2020, Trump announced he was ordering ByteDance to divest ownership, and if they did not comply he threatened to use an executive order to shut down its U.S. operations as early as August 1 of that year. During his remaining time in office, Trump signed executive orders to have TikTok shut down, which were later repealed when Biden became President. Biden instead ordered an investigation into the threats the app posed to national security.
Last year, Trump’s position on TikTok changed and he came out in favor of the app. This appears to have been motivated more by his dislike of Meta and Facebook than any consideration for freedom of speech. At the time, he told CNBC, “There are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it … you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people.” Trump had been temporarily banned from Meta/Facebook after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Many have pointed out that his change of heart is also likely because he’s found an audience on the app. Attention beats national security in Trump’s eyes.
Now, Trump hopes to delay the Supreme Court justices’ decision until after his swearing-in on January 20. In December of 2024, Trump had an amicus brief filed on his behalf. Within the brief, it states:
“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government—concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged.”
Elon Musk, on the other hand, has remained uncharacteristically quiet on the matter, especially for someone who claims he bought an entire social media platform to protect free speech.
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