As the clock ticks down to the day when Communist Chinese social malware platform TikTok must find a new owner or cease U.S. operations, Chinese officials are "evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk" taking over.
According to the usual unnamed sources who spoke with Bloomberg, "Beijing officials strongly prefer that TikTok remains under the ownership of parent ByteDance" but have "already begun to debate contingency plans for TikTok as part of an expansive discussion on how to work with Donald Trump’s administration, one of which involves Musk."
The pitch is that TikTok and Musk-owned X's combined resources "could bolster X’s efforts to attract advertisers" and that Musk's AI company, xAI, "could benefit from the huge amounts of data generated from TikTok."
TikTok told Variety on Monday that the Bloomberg report is "pure fiction." Even Bloomberg admitted that it remains "unclear whether Musk, TikTok, and ByteDance have held any talks about the terms of any possible deal."
Put those two items together, and Musk buying TikTok's American operations looks less like a real possibility and more like a trial balloon floated by Communist Chinese desperate to keep TikTok in America.
My gut reaction to the news was, "Are you kidding me with this? Why would Musk want to buy a social media platform in need of a total top-to-bottom re-do when he already owns a working social media platform that he did a total top-to-bottom re-do on?"
Besides, the solution to all problems cannot be "let Elon run it," as tempting as that sometimes seems, because there's only so much of him to go around — and we need Musk to keep saving free speech, cutting government waste, providing emergency relief from North Carolina to California, and working to spread humanity throughout the Inner Solar System.
He's a busy guy.
I'd remind you that there are zero Western-owned platforms allowed to operate in China — a total ban. Chinese aren't even allowed to use the global internet as you and I know it, trapped behind the Great Firewall of China and allowed to see and publish and share only what the Communist Party allows them to see and publish and share.
But back to TikTok. Behind the Great Firewall, TikTok is an "eat your veggies" platform, serving up its youthful audience a healthy diet of science, technology, math, history, life skills, patriotic themes, physical fitness, etc.
The American version... Jeebus, what a hot mess of humanity, geared algorithmically to act as social contagions. That's the reason I've spent years describing TikTok as "social malware" and why Chaya Raichik was able to ride her LibsOfTikTok account to fame and fortune. There's so much ick to expose that I don't see how one woman does it — maybe she has a staff by now.
But the point is this. I would never argue for Communist Chinese-style censorship on an American (or Western) social media platform. But TikTok is an enemy agent of influence — as well as a data vacuum going straight to Chinese servers. Either its ownership becomes friendly (a dubious proposition, given TikTok's American business model) or it gets shut down.
While I might — might — trust Musk (or someone like him, if we could find one) to run TikTok, I'd never ask him to. That leaves us with one good option.
Shut. It. Down.
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