Elon Musk and TikTok? The App Denies It, But Could It Happen?

Chinese officials prefer that TikTok remain under the control of parent Bytedance, the report said, adding that the company is contesting the ban with an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

TikTok is now denying this.In a response to Variety, a spokesperson said:“We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.”But it’s important to note that the Bloomberg story didn’t report on what TikTok was planning; it said that Chinese officials were debating this plan.… https://t.co/kV2boSeHuS

Under one scenario, Musk’s social media platform X would take control of TikTok U.S. and run the business together, the report said, adding that the Chinese officials have yet to reach any firm consensus about how to proceed and their deliberations are still preliminary.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 14, 2025

It is a key distinction, to be sure. TikTok is not its own parent company. Bytedance is, and the belief among critics is that all that separates Bytedance and the Chinese government is a series of shell companies.

However, as reporter Yashar Ali notes, the original report did not say TikTok was considering selling to Musk, but that Chinese officials were.

However, there is a new report out suggesting that a certain billionaire tech mogul may be in the running to buy it – which will surely not go over well with the progressive left.

As the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., in an outstanding opinion by Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, found, TikTok’s “ultimate parent” is a company called ByteDance, which is “headquartered in China” and conducts “significant operations there.” ByteDance has created a series of shell companies to attempt to obscure Chinese ownership and operation of TikTok, but both President Trump and President Biden issued executive orders specifically finding that TikTok was controlled by Chinese interests.

While the Chinese government officially denies any involvement in the app, it does have access by virtue of its own laws on Internet regulation, have possession of every bit and byte of data collected by TikTok. That is a big reason why the U.S. passed a law to force the sale of the app. Faced with the possibility of losing arguably its biggest user base to U.S. law, Chinese officials appear to be seriously considering selling to Musk.

As the Supreme Court appears poised to uphold a U.S. law forcing the sale of the social media video platform TikTok, there is a scramble behind the scenes to figure out what to do with the app. Bytedance, the parent company behind it, says they’ll shut down the app in the U.S., while users across the country are upset it may have come to such an end.

source