Will US TikTok fall into Elon Musk's hands?

As the owner of X, Elon Musk could expand his dominance in the social media sector with the acquisition of the US arm of TikTok.

On January 19, 2025, the Supreme Court of the United States will decide whether or not to uphold the law, signed in April 2024 by Joe Biden, to ban the Chinese-owned platform which boasts 1 billion users globally.

There is growing concern about the security of the data handled by TikTok and, therefore, about national security. On the table is the option of a sale to disassociate the American branch from its owner ByteDance, to avoid it being unavailable in the US.

As CNN points out, there are doubts about how the law will work in practice and how it will be applied by the Government once it comes into force, since, to date, there is no precedent in the US for blocking a social media platform.

Bloomberg has said that the Chinese authorities have been considering avoiding such a ban by selling the US branch of TikTok to strategic allies within the country.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the obvious choice to run TikTok in the US would be Elon Musk, Donald Trump's right-hand man.

Initially, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce declared that it would firmly oppose the forced sale of TikTok, according to CNN. Meanwhile, ByteDance has already warned that its US arm is not for sale, stating that a ban would amount to a crackdown on freedom of speech.

Bloomberg points out that China seeks to maintain some control over the platform globally, leaving the US operations in the hands of Musk, a strategic ally in every sense, who would apply his strategy for protecting sensitive data.

Analysts estimate TikTok's US division to be worth between $40 and $50 billion, an amount similar to the $44 billion Musk paid for Twitter in 2022.

Musk, who owns SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, OpenAI and X Corp, is highly dependent on the Chinese market - he has Tesla's main global production base there - and will also be a key ally for China when it comes to negotiating Trump's tariff proposals.

The deal would also have significant benefits for Musk as it would allow X to incorporate its content recommendation technology thanks to its machine learning algorithms, considered among the most advanced in the sector.

The South African-born tycoon said he was in favor of TikTok continuing to operate in the United States back in April 2024, even though it is direct competition for X: "TikTok should not be banned in the USA, even though such a ban may benefit the X platform," he said then. "Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. It is not what America stands for.”

As CNN points out, selling TikTok to Musk would ensure that ByteDance can continue to "earn something" through the American division of TikTok, which has millions of followers.

For now, the Chinese company has denied the speculation, calling it a "rumor" and "pure fiction", according to 'Variety', which pointed out that ByteDance was not even exploring the possibility of a sale to a group "blessed" by the United States.

While Musk might be the obvious choice, other names have surfaced, though not particularly seriously. This is the case of the YouTuber 'Mr Beast', who posted "Okay, I'll buy TikTok so it doesn't get banned" or the rapper Meek Mill who wrote "Sell me TikTok!".

It remains to be seen how the fate of US TikTok will play out. If it falls into Musk's hands, it could completely change the map of social media in the US.