Murdoch Family Eyes TikTok Takeover

According to the New York Times, Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan are weighing a bid to invest in TikTok's US operations as Washington pressures ByteDance to divest. It'll be a bold move into social media for a family that has repeatedly stumbled in the digital Space. Back in 2005, Murdoch paid $580 million for MySpace, once hailed as the future of online networking. Within just a few years, Facebook, Facebook eclipsed it. By 2011, Murdoch sold MySpace for only $35 million, losing more than half a billion dollars. He later admitted, quote, we screwed up in every possible way. Another failed experiment came in 2011 with the Daily, an iPad only news app marketed as the future of digital journalism and featuring voices like Gary Vaynerchuk. I remember it well. It folded less than two years later after losing tens of millions of dollars. Those failures raise questions about whether the Murdochs are the right partners to shepherd TikTok's American future. Still, the platform's value and reach make it irresistible. If the deal goes through, Fox Corporation would join other high profile investors like Oracle's Larry Ellison, Dell's Michael dell in reshaping TikTok under US ownership. What's the real message here? If you're worried about your kids spending way too much time on a place like TikTok, this is good news for you. Because when Rupert Murdoch and his family get involved in digital online communities, all of a sudden no kid ever wants to go to it. Look at what happened to MySpace. The same could happen with TikTok. Let's dive a little deeper, okay? I'm having a little fun at Rupert Murdoch's expense. I admit it. What the deal looks like is Michael Dell taking a piece of this pie. Larry Ellison, who, depending on the day of the week, is the richest man in the world. Andreessen Horowitz, the famed venture capital firm taking pieces and some relatively small piece would be controlled by Rupert Murdoch. So I don't really think that Rupert Murdoch has such a stain on his fingers that it's going to ruin TikTok. Because any deal that is struck is most likely going to say, let's continue doing what they've been doing. Let's let that Chinese algorithm continue to do its magic and put stuff in front of people. So all of a sudden, former members of your family, formerly productive members of your office, who are now staring at their screen every second of the day and every night watching TikTok, they'll probably still do it because the owners of TikTok want that huge, huge audience and Those of you not Familiar with it, TikTok is a little different. Now, supposedly, all the social media platforms are trying to mimic TikTok. Now. They're getting away from sending out your content to your subscribers, and instead they're looking at every piece of content saying, hmm, who would find this interesting? Who's likely to watch it for more than an eighth of a second? And then they're pushing it out. So TikTok, to its credit, really took that idea and implemented better than anyone in the history of the world. But we're now seeing YouTube doing that. We're seeing Instagram doing. They're all trying to do that, because that is the way to get in front of more people, to sell more eyeballs to more advertisers, and to make more money. Here's the really wretched thing about this TikTok deal. The United States Congress, Republicans and Democrats got together, agreed. They passed legislation saying, we don't want the Chinese government to have this much of a direct line, basically hardwiring how Americans think. Hardwiring, especially how America's youth think, we think this is dangerous. And China essentially agrees. They don't let Facebook, they don't let all of these American social media firms push whatever they want. They certainly don't let American social media firms push the idea that there should be two Chinas and that there should be independence for Taiwan. No, no, no, no. China understands firsthand that you want to control the realm of acceptable debate, so they keep all that out. Now, here in the United States, we're supposed to be in favor of free speech. But is it free if an outside, foreign, sometimes hostile, sometimes enemy government can manipulate algorithms to make you hate your own government, to not support your own government? That is certainly the fear that many politicians across the political spectrum, Republicans and Democrats alike, were worried about this, rightfully so. They passed legislation. Trump was all in favor of getting rid of the top back when there used to be criticism. And the Chinese, whether you want to call it shrewd, cynical, or evil, I'll let you decide. But once Trump got back elected into office, the people at TikTok, the Chinese government whom they report to, said, let's do a little tweak in the algorithm. From now on, we're going to push content that makes Donald Trump look good. Can you find criticism of Trump on TikTok? Sure. But they tweaked it so that a lot more pro Trump, pro maga ideas, personalities were promoted. And all of a sudden, like Trump's thinking, wow, this is a great platform. How do we get more of this? Kick it off. No way. Let's. Let's have more of this stuff. So he kept on just flagrantly violating congressional risk resolutions, bills, laws, and pushing back the date of when he was supposed to force ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to sell, to come up with new ownership or just to be eliminated from. From access to American consumers. He flagrantly violated Congress's wishes, which is unconstitutional. The President of the United States is supposed to administer the laws passed by Congress. That's the form of government we have. We don't really have a form of government that says the president is kind of like a king and can take under advisement what Congress said, but really, he can do whatever he wants. That's not the form of government we have. Have we're not supposed to have, unfortunately, is the form of government we do have today. So here's the big fear. A lot of people, thoughtful observers across the political spectrum, are saying, okay, Trump's making it really easy for the Chinese to continue to control things. Yeah, you can have board seats, but everything is still being controlled by the algorithm and the engineers of that in China. What happens if one day Trump is no longer president and they don't see him as the vehicle for bringing down America and sowing distrust and destroying our infrastructure and our economy? Because Trump seems to be doing a pretty good job of that on his own. What happens if you have a typical mainstream centrist administration, as you did 2021 to 2025, or as you did 2009 to 2017? If you have a centrist administration, then the fear is that the Chinese government essentially does what the Russian government did with RT is they push a button and they force out a huge, huge amplification, a sharing of any message, right or left, that attacks the administration in power, and you destroy any government's ability to mobilize public support for its initiatives. You therefore weaken America. That's the whole reason for why Congress actually passed this law and why it's horrific that Dear Leader thinks he can thumb his nose at it. Now, finally, it looks like there is going to be some sale going to various Trump supporters, which is kind of how mobsters run things. It's how Putin divvied up the economy of the former Soviet Union. It's happening here. It's crony capitalism. Is that better than the Chinese running it? Maybe, maybe not. We'll see. Sam.