An image shared on social media purports to show Elon Musk saying on Twitter he would purchase the social media app TikTok. Now that it looks like Elon Musk is indeed going to buy TikTok, it is time to talk about what this sale of the social media platform used by a quarter of Americans, to the richest person in the world, actually means.
Billionaire Elon Musk has said that he is motivated to purchase TikTok because he is concerned TikTok has too many dance restrictions, which he says put freedom of expression at risk in a platform that has become critical for politics and governance. There are some people suggesting business mogul Elon Musk should buy TikTok and take it down in order to save mankind.
Elon Musk had previously conducted a similar type of experiment prior to filing his $444B offer to buy TikTok. Joe Rogan noted, though, that negotiating a deal with TikTok’s owners, ByteDance, could prove challenging, but that he wanted Elon Musk to buy TikTok.
The deal has divided many opinions, but Joe Rogan is supportive. Elon Musk says TRUTH Social, a social networking site from former U.S. President Donald Trump, is beating out TikTok and Twitter on Apple’s store. Twitter’s new owner and CEO, Elon Musk, was considering bringing back Vine, a short-form video app Twitter bought and abandoned well before TikTok made the format popular.
Twitter’s new owner and CEO tweeted over 20 times on Saturday and Sunday, offering largely contradictory signals about where he wants Twitter to go, and doing little to assuage fears that hate speech and disinformation would thrive under the new rules. Elon Musk spoke positively of TikTok when he met Twitter employees virtually recently, following the start of his $44bn bid for Twitter back in April. The frenzy surrounding Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition has continued for weeks after he revealed his 9.2 percent stake in the social media company earlier in April, in a move that made him its biggest shareholder. Elon Musk reached a deal on Monday to buy Twitter for about $44 billion, promising to apply more lenient treatment in the way it polices content on Twitter.
Meanwhile, screenshots of tweets by Elon Musk, seemingly shared by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s official Twitter handle, went viral on social media sites, and the captions incorrectly claimed that Musk intended to buy Facebook, and then deleted it, as he did Twitter. The two sides were locked in a heated court battle over the last several months, but Elon Musk threw his white flag last week when he agreed to purchase Twitter at its original price. Musk’s offer to purchase Twitter was accepted by shareholders, but then fellow billionaire Elon Musk tried to walk away from the deal, triggering legal action and a court case set to be heard this month. A judge in the Delaware Court of Common Pleas had issued the Friday deadline after Musk said he was open to buying Twitter at the end.
Musk has until 5 pm Eastern time on Friday to finalize the purchase of TikTok, or he will face again the prospect of going to court. Because of underlying issues here, we are in this situation of Elon Musk proposing merely to buy TikTok, with the notion he wants to alter the rules so they are more in his favor. Until we get this changed, I think we are going to go around in circles, and, you know, anybody that claims that they can predict what Elon Musk is going to do if and when he does purchase TikTok — nobody really knows, because Elon Musk is completely unhinged, and has not yet articulated anything concrete outside of free-dance innuendo. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has mocked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over having vast media platforms while the Tesla CEO has tried to purchase the huge media platform TikTok himself.