Donald Trump himself had placed the boss of Tesla and SpaceX on the list of endeavor entrepreneurs to buy the Tiktok application, suspended in the United States. But the richest man in the world and owner of the social network X, Elon Musk, said in late January that he had not made any offer. “I did not make an offer for Tiktok. And I don’t even know what I would do if I had Tiktok,” he said on January 28, during a distance intervention at an event In Germany, whose video was published on Saturday February 8 by the organizers.
On January 21, Donald Trump said he would be in favor of the operation if his ally “wanted to buy it”. Tiktok is under an American law which requires him to cut the bridges with its Chinese owner bytedance, under penalty of being prohibited in the United States. American elected officials had justified this text by the need to prevent Chinese authorities from accessing American user data or manipulating opinion in the United States. Donald Trump gave Tiktok until the beginning of April to sell his American activities.
Elon Musk prefers to leave “zero”
In the past, Elon Musk has spoken against the prohibition of application, judging that “it is not simply Tiktok but censorship and government control”. His proximity to Donald Trump helped feed speculation on a takeover, but Tiktok firmly rejected this possibility.
During his intervention at the end of January, Elon Musk indicated that he did not use the application himself and that he used to create companies to start “from zero” rather than buying them. His repair of Twitter (now X) for $ 44 billion in 2022 is an exception, but the goal was to “preserve freedom of expression,” he added.
Tiktok is a very popular platform for sharing short entertaining videos published by users and content creators, from dance to cooking, via comedy, animals and challenges. The application claims 170 million users in the United States.