Julie Laffer

Israeli-Aligned Billionaires Seize TikTok in Battle for U.S. Narrative Control The White House has announced that the forced sale of TikTok will be finalized this week. The new ownership led by Larry Ellison - the largest individual donor to the IDF - will take control of U.S. user data and the algorithm which the White House says will be "retrained". Ellison, who made his fortune developing Oracle - a database system he originally built for the CIA - already controls CBS, Paramount, MTV, Comedy Central, Showtime, Nickelodeon (which makes kids shows) as well as Channel 10 in Australia and Channel 5 in the UK. Ellison is also expected to finalize control over Warner Bros. Discovery (including CNN, HBO and the Discovery channel) before the end of 2025. Even before the forced sale is finalised, censorship of TikTok content critical of Israel, including of the deal itself, has reached extreme levels as the platform moves to align with its prospective new owners. Fox – a Murdoch asset - is also seeking to join the Ellison consortium, a move that could enable cross-promotion between Fox and TikTok, further tightening the Israeli-aligned information bubble. Disapproval of what Israel is doing in Gaza has risen to 60% of the US population, nearly double the approval rate of 32%. The U.S. still has over three years of Trump left. Israeli-aligned Jewish billionaires control OpenAI, Google, Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, Palantir, CBS, HBO, and most of Conde Nast (Reddit, Vogue, The New Yorker, Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair) as well as numerous Hollywood studios, regional papers and radio stations. Europe, meanwhile, remains largely absent, offering little real competition in the information space. Its one real success story? Telegram, which it managed to comprehensively alienate after France arrested its founder, supposedly for not handing over enough user data. Will the EU and other U.S. allies align with the “Israelified” TikTok algorithm, or attempt to create a politicised alternative of their own? Decentralised alternatives like Keet and Nostr offer strong resistance to censorship but are still young. Larger platforms like Telegram and Rednote carry serious risks of censorship, including eventual sell-off to other interests. For users the sweet spot may be to use both. One for political reliability, the others for a (politically temporary) audience.