TikTok’s fate hangs in the balance as the Supreme Court could ban it as the law signed by President Joe Biden in April requires TikTok to be independent of its China-based parent company ByteDance. The ban may come into effect starting on January 19 and if it happens it will be the first major blocking of a social media platform in the country. This is the perfect time for Elon Musk to buy Tiktok, X users said starting a discourse over whether Musk should buy it or not.
For TikTok to be available in the US it has to have a US owner. Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary already expressed his desire to buy TikTok but said that he would need Donald Trump’s help to pull off the deal.
Donald Trump wanted a ban on TikTok in 2020 but now his opinion has changed. Now he is trying to resolve the ban and hence he has asked the Supreme Court to stop the law from taking effect until after he takes office. It’s not clear whether the Supreme Court will comply with the request. If it does, Donald Trump can pause the ban as the president for 90 days if TikTok shows it’s in the process of separating from ByteDance. The Justices indicated that they could uphold the ban as they were not satisfied with TikTok’s argument against the ban during oral arguments.
What Elon Musk said on TikTok ban
In April 2024, Elon Musk said he thinks that TikTok should not be banned in the USA though it may benefit his platform X. “Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. It is not what America stands for,” Musk said at that time. He said he was not in favor of banning things and that he did not have any strong opinion on TikTok.
Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg? Conspiracy theories surface
Mark Zuckerberg reportedly once tried to buy TikTok and then he had all love lost for TikTok — he even said TikTok is a threat to democracy. Now that Mark Zuckerberg is apparently toeing the line of Donald Trump, conspiracy theories claim that it could be either Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. And the third possibility, according to conspiracy theories, is that they are consolidating toward the incoming president to make him ban TikTok.
