Showerthought after reading about Trump and Tiktok. Bet you Elon advises Trump to force the spinoff so that he can buy it.

  • KiwiFlavor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 days ago

    If it did happen, could Elon afford it? Surely TikTok is much more valuable than Twitter, right? Musk could barely scrounge enough backing and had to put up his Tesla shares as collateral to get enough cash for the Twitter purchase.

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      The question isn’t about affording it, the questions is why China would give up such a valuable Intel gathering and propaganda tool? They wouldn’t sell it for all the tea in China.

      • KiwiFlavor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 days ago

        Often, yes.

        Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 for 44 billion, and he was overpaying. For TikTok’s American component, its price could be $100 billion, according to BBC and CBS or even $180 billion according to the Financial Times. Although a forced sale would definitely decrease the value (and that value includes TikTok’s proprietary algorithms which aren’t a given) it is definitely worth more than Twitter, even 2022 Twitter