MrBeast is officially trying to buy TikTok

Ever since our new president, Donald Trump, temporarily saved TikTok from a nationwide ban, Americans have wondered which deep-pocketed businessman would throw his hat in the ring to buy the popular social media platform. Now, we have a new contender: viral influencer Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast). “Okay, I’ll buy Tik Tok so it doesn’t get banned,” Donaldson said Published on X Last week. He added: “Ironically, a lot of billionaires have been reaching out to me since I tweeted this. Let’s see if we can make this happen.”

On Tuesday, Donaldson’s attorney Reported to CNN That the reality TV star was serious about buying the social media platform, and that Donaldson is now part of a group of US investors pushing to buy the site. Paul Hastings law firm, which represents the group, said the offer comes in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a previously passed law that would force TikTok to be sold or banned in the United States.

It makes perfect sense for Donaldson – whose entire body of work revolves around him Braindead viral content generation-You would want to own the platform most responsible for distributing deadly viral content. Buying TikTok would effectively give it a monopoly on information and entertainment, which is essentially the equivalent of winning the lottery for the world’s most powerful influencer.

The main reason we got into this mess is because last April, Joe Biden signed the bill This would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to either sell its app to a US company or face a nationwide ban. Commentators have noticed Political confusion This was due to TikTok’s overwhelming popularity among young voters. When he returned to the White House this week, Trump easily took advantage of Biden’s unpopular decision. By signing an executive order, Trump gave TikTok the bill 75-day extension windowDuring this period, ByteDance will be allowed to find a suitable buyer, provided that America retains 50 percent ownership of the platform. Trump has already announced that he would be open to other well-known figures buying the site, including fellow billionaires Elon Musk and Larry Ellison.

However, there are signs that Trump may be supportive of the Donaldson deal. Bloomberg And I mentioned Brad Bondi, the brother of Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, represents the group of investors behind Donaldson’s bid for the platform. Trump and Bondi have history together. Bondi was part of the legal team that helped integrate the president’s troubled Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (which owns his social media platform, Social truth) with Blank check company Bloomberg wrote last March. The deal was widely viewed As a rescue plan for Trump When his legal problems were at their worst. Bondi also previously represented Elon Musk in 2018 when the tech billionaire was charged with securities fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission, The Lever. I mentioned previously.

Why the United States moved so aggressively to ban children’s favorite social media platform is not yet fully understood. the Dominant narrative The point was that US officials were concerned about the platform’s ties to China and wanted to sever contact between the company and its geopolitical enemy. However, there is an alternative theory that TikTok served as Popular vectors Through which pro-Palestinian activists can distribute evidence of Israeli atrocities, thus turning America’s children against its own ally in the Middle East. Mitt Romney said the same thing last year, When he pointed The reason there is “overwhelming support for us to shut down” TikTok is because of the “overwhelming” number of mentions of Palestinians, compared to other social media sites. that A timely editorial Last year, he similarly blamed the high volume of pro-Palestinian content for a rise in anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses in the United States.

Since TikTok’s revival, rumors have spread that the platform is now suppressing pro-Palestinian content. However, these rumors may be a bit exaggerated. Media Investigation 404 was published on Wednesday Found it The site does not appear to be consistently suppressing pro-Palestinian content. The site told journalists that the pro-Palestinian content did not violate its terms of service.

If the goal of placing TikTok under US control is indeed to stop the flow of pro-Palestinian content to American audiences, there will be a certain precedent for this in the behavior of other US tech companies. A recent Human Rights Watch report on Meta Found it The company was practicing “systematic censorship of Palestinian content on Instagram and Facebook.” X and YouTube They have also faced their own controversies related to Israeli-Palestinian content.