In a compelled sale that has been referred to as “some of the contentious tech transactions of the last decade”, the Trump administration is following by on the president’s government order to switch the American operations of TikTok to home management.
The video-based social media platform, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has 1.59 billion month-to-month customers worldwide. This phenomenal market penetration raised issues about private information misuse, Chinese language affect and nationwide safety implications. In 2023, the TikTok app was banned from all Australian government-owned telephones, bringing this nation’s public service into line with 5 Eyes companions Britain, New Zealand, Canada and america.
Within the last yr of the Biden administration, congress handed laws in April 2024 that required ByteDance to promote management of its US operations or face a full ban.
President Donald Trump – who has publicly declared himself a fan of TikTok, aligning himself with its 170 million American customers – noticed larger alternative in a sale, and shared his imaginative and prescient for a takeover consortium final month. Whereas ByteDance would retain a fifth of the operation, the lion’s share would go to a grouping of US billionaires, together with Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle, and Michael Dell, founding father of Dell Applied sciences. Additionally within the combine had been Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch.
“I hate to let you know this – a man named Lachlan is concerned,” Trump informed reporters. “You recognize who Lachlan is? That’s a very uncommon title, Lachlan Murdoch. Rupert might be gonna be within the group, I believe they’re gonna be within the group, a couple of others. Actually nice folks. Very outstanding folks.”
This isn’t the primary Murdoch foray into social media. Information Corp paid $580 million for MySpace in 2005 however offered it six years later for $35 million. Rupert Murdoch mentioned his firm managed to “mismanage it in each doable manner”.
“TikTok is greater than MySpace ever was by a number of orders of magnitude,” says Denis Muller, senior analysis fellow on the Centre for Advancing Journalism, Melbourne College. “Will probably be managed by a consortium of enormously rich males who’re in Trump’s pocket and ideologically aligned with the Murdochs.
“The important thing hyperlink to Trump is thru Larry Ellison and his firm, Oracle,” says Muller, including that Forbes journal has estimated Trump owns between US$32,000 and $130,000 value of Oracle shares.
“That mixture offers Trump very robust leverage over the consortium that’s taking on TikTok US.”
One other rumoured investor is MGX, an AI-focused funding agency backed by the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned funding fund. There’s a private monetary connection between MGX and Trump, with the agency’s $2 billion funding in crypto trade Binance utilizing the stablecoin created by Trump’s World Liberty Monetary.
“Not solely is it a gross battle of curiosity on Trump’s half, but it surely offers him a huge on-line platform which could have little selection however to evolve to no matter he desires it to do or say,” says Muller.
“We will count on that the TikTok algorithm within the US, which shall be managed by the US consortium, shall be adjusted to make sure it’s as beneficial as doable for Trump.
“The massive query is what precisely are the US regulators doing about that key hyperlink between Trump and Ellison/Oracle? It seems to be totally corrupt, and given TikTok’s market dominance there should certainly be anti-trust points,” Muller says.
That is a collision of geopolitics, economics, media and expertise. It’s straightforward to spot the winners within the compelled sale of an asset many imagine has been wildly undervalued, however the largest loser is perhaps public probity. It stays to be seen how Beijing will reply to Trump’s show of financial coercion in purported service of nationwide safety.
There’s a deadline of December 16 for the deal to be accomplished. Specifics of algorithm management, licensing and information movement stay underneath negotiation. The involvement of the Murdoch household raises questions on how content material is perhaps moderated, curated or prioritised. TikTok’s content material distribution – what’s really helpful, what’s seen and what’s hidden – might shift in ways in which favour sure political ideologies or identities if it follows the trail of different Murdoch media shops.
Trump tried to pre-empt predictable issues about bias. “If I might, I’d make it 100 per cent MAGA-related,” Trump mentioned. “However it’s not going to work out that manner. Sadly, no, everybody’s going to be handled pretty. Each group, each philosophy, each coverage, shall be handled very pretty.”
New York-based David Folkenflik, media correspondent for NPR, says Trump’s billionaire allies paid an undisclosed quantity as a way to be a part of the consortium. “The very fact Trump has primarily required a multibillion-dollar cost from members of the consortium, requiring them to spend cash to take a position, would appear to suit the definition of crony capitalism,” Folkenflik says.
“The concept a president is directing non-public transactions for political and private causes appears to be a corruption of how we predict free enterprise and free markets are purported to work.”
Even in a chaotic yr for US politics and enterprise, it has shocked some observers that Trump is lauding the Murdochs’ involvement. In mid July, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit towards Rupert Murdoch and Dow Jones, the father or mother firm of The Wall Road Journal, after it reported that the president wrote a “bawdy” birthday observe to intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein. Lower than 10 weeks later, Trump was enthusing about Murdoch membership of the US TikTok consortium.
Folkenflik is unsurprised by the Murdoch involvement. “It takes extraordinary ranges of compartmentalisation to disassociate your self from the president suing you for $10 billion, however each Murdoch and Trump are extremely transactional in how they take a look at issues. It’s a squabble on the sideline. You can simply see a world the place Trump might let this lawsuit collapse on itself. He tends to lose fits that go ahead, and depends on folks settling.”
The Murdochs’ involvement within the takeover additionally raises broader questions of media consolidation, on condition that Fox is already a highly effective voice throughout conventional media platforms. Half-ownership of US TikTok would considerably improve its attain, augmenting tv and print shops with a social media platform that has robust attain into youthful demographics.
Pew Analysis Middle has discovered that information consumption on TikTok has elevated sharply lately. Fifty-five per cent of TikTok customers say they often get information on the platform, up from 22 per cent in 2020. Trump’s private account has 15 million followers.
Many different questions are but to be answered. How will algorithm management be structured? Will ByteDance retain any affect by way of licensing? Will oversight mechanisms be clear and dependable? Will US TikTok person numbers improve, with extra shoppers feeling assured concerning the safety of their information, or will younger folks depart it behind for a totally different digital hangout?
As it’s shaping up, the compelled sale will not be solely “some of the contentious tech transactions of the last decade”, says Akhmad Hanan – it’s a clear victory on a variety of fronts for Trump.
“Domestically, it permits Trump to look powerful on China whereas avoiding the backlash of slicing off an app beloved by extra than 170 million Individuals,” the researcher wrote in an article for the Lowy Institute.
“The transfer additionally bolsters his marketing campaign narrative forward of the 2026 midterm elections, presenting him as the one chief able to reining in Chinese language tech energy. On the identical time, critics argue the White Home has set a harmful precedent by politicising company possession.”
That precedent is, nevertheless, nothing new for Rupert Murdoch. Simply as his energy gave the impression to be waning, a social media deal might but once more assert it. In a media-political panorama the place nothing appears too far-fetched, the nonagenarian mogul is about to have a foothold on a platform even he might by no means have imagined on the flip of the century.
This text was first revealed within the print version of The Saturday Paper on
October 3, 2025 as “TikTok stitch-up”.
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