Ever since our new president, Donald Trump, temporarily saved TikTok from a nationwide ban, Americans have been wondering which deep-pocketed businessman will jump into the ring to buy the popular social media platform. Now we have a new competitor: viral influencer Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast). “Okay, I’ll buy Tik Tok so it doesn’t get banned,” Donaldson posted on last week. “Paradoxically, so many billionaires have contacted me since I tweeted this, let’s see if we can make this happen,” he added.
On Tuesday, Donaldson’s lawyer communicated to CNN that the reality TV star was seriously considering buying the social media platform and that Donaldson is now part of a group of American investors pushing to acquire the site. Law firm Paul Hastings, which represents the group, said the offer followed the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold previously published law that would force the sale or ban of TikTok in the United States.
It is entirely logical that Donaldson, whose entire activity revolves around generate brain-dead viral content– would like to own the platform most responsible for the distribution of brain-dead viral content. Buying TikTok would effectively give him an infotainment monopoly which, for the world’s most powerful influencer, is essentially the equivalent of winning the lottery.
The only reason we’re in this mess is because last April, Joe Biden signed a bill This would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to either sell its app to a U.S. company or face a nationwide ban. Commentators have noted this a political error this is due to the fact that TikTok is extremely popular with young voters. Upon his return to the White House this week, Trump easily took advantage of Biden’s unpopular decision. By signing an executive order, Trump gave the TikTok bill a 75-day extension windowperiod during which ByteDance will be allowed to find a suitable buyer, provided that America retains 50 percent ownership of the platform. Trump has already indicated he would be open to other well-known figures buying the site, including fellow billionaires Elon Musk and Larry Ellison.
There are signs, however, that Trump may support the Donaldson deal. Bloomberg reported that Brad Bondi, the brother of Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, represents the group of investors behind Donaldson’s effort to acquire the platform. Trump and Bondi have a shared history. Bondi was part of the legal team that helped merge Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (which owns his social media platform, Social truth) with a blank check company last March, writes Bloomberg. The agreement was widely perceived as a bailout for Trump when his legal problems were at their peak. Bondi also represented Elon Musk in 2018 when the tech billionaire was charged with securities fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission, The Lever. previously reported.
Why the United States has taken such aggressive steps to ban its children’s favorite social media platform is not yet fully understood. THE dominant narrative This is because American officials are concerned about the platform’s links with China and want to sever any links between the company and its geopolitical enemy. An alternative theory, however, is that TikTok may have served as a popular vector through which pro-Palestinian activists can disseminate evidence of Israeli atrocities, thereby turning American children against their favored ally in the Middle East. Mitt Romney said this last year: when he suggested that the reason there was “overwhelming support for shutting down” TikTok was the “overwhelming” number of “mentions of Palestinians, compared to other social media sites.” A opinion article in Time Last year, the plethora of pro-Palestinian content was also blamed for the rise in anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses in the United States.
Since the resurrection of TikTok, rumors have been circulating that the platform would now remove pro-Palestinian content. These rumors may, however, be slightly exaggerated. A 404 Media investigation published Wednesday found that the site did not appear to systematically remove pro-Palestinian content. The site told journalists that the pro-Palestinian content did not violate its terms of service.
If the purpose of bringing TikTok under American control is indeed to stop the flow of pro-Palestinian content to American audiences, there would be some precedent in the behavior of other American technology companies. A recent Human Rights Watch report on Meta found that the company practiced “systemic censorship of Palestinian content on Instagram and Facebook.” X And YouTube have also faced their own controversies regarding Israeli-Palestinian content.