Elon Musk, the world\u2019s richest person and a top advisor to US President Donald Trump, said he has no interest in acquiring social media platform TikTok\u2019s operations in the United States, in comments released on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve not put in a bid for TikTok and I don\u2019t have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok,\u201d said Musk in comments made via video link at a German forum in late January that were released on the weekend.<\/p>\n
TikTok is facing a US law that ordered the company to break off from its Chinese owner ByteDance or otherwise be banned in the United States over national security concerns regarding the data it gathers on users.<\/p>\n
In one of his first acts in office, Trump ordered a pause on enforcing the law that should have seen TikTok effectively made illegal in the country a day before he took office for a second term.<\/p>\n
Soon after, Trump said he would be open to Musk \u2014 the owner of social media platform X, Tesla and a slew of other companies \u2014 buying the platform.<\/p>\n
Musk, however, said he did not wish to acquire the company.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t use TikTok personally, so, you know, I\u2019m not that familiar with it,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk bought social media giant Twitter, which he renamed X, for $44 billion in 2022, insisting he was doing so in order to safeguard \u201cfree speech\u201d.<\/p>\n
Since his takeover, rights campaigners warn there has been a spike in hate speech and disinformation on the platform.<\/p>\n
Musk was one of Trump\u2019s main financial backers in his presidential campaign, and is heading the US president\u2019s budget-slashing initiatives.<\/p>\n
His so-called \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency\u201d (Doge) has targeted a range of federal government agencies and regulators, with the apparent intent of shutting them down and firing staff, especially those not in line with Trump\u2019s political agenda.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, a US judge issued an emergency order blocking Musk\u2019s government reform team from accessing personal and financial data for millions of Americans stored at the Treasury Department, court documents showed.<\/p>\n
In the comments at the forum in Germany, Musk also took aim at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which are meant to support historically oppressed and disenfranchised communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cDEI is simply racism rebranded,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m against racism and sexism no matter who it\u2019s directed against.\u201d<\/p>\n
US officials have been racing to enact Trump\u2019s war on DEI across the federal bureaucracy \u2014 dismantling training initiatives, scrapping grants and sidelining hundreds of workers.<\/p>\n
In Germany, Musk has voiced firm support for the far-right anti-immigration AfD party \u2014 a political taboo in a country whose Nazi past remains a sensitive subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elon Musk, the world\u2019s richest person and a top advisor to US President Donald Trump, said he has no interest in acquiring social media platform TikTok\u2019s operations in the United States, in comments released on Saturday. \u201cI\u2019ve not put in a bid for TikTok and I don\u2019t have any plans for what I would do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5449,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5447\/revisions\/5449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}