Donald Trump repealed the infamous TikTok ban that took effect briefly, buying more time for a buyout of the app’s parent company. However, depending on whose hands it falls into, the bill’s purpose to ban it may have been fulfilled.

As US Congress voted on a TikTok ban in March of last year, it was quickly speculated that the proposal had everything to do with pro-Palestinian content posted to the platform. This was not least the case due to a leaked conversation in which Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the pro-Israeli Anti-Defamation League (ADL), explicitly said, “We have a major TikTok problem.”

Washington based think-tanks like the Atlantic Council quickly jumped into action, publishing pieces suggesting that “Tehran cooked up a conspiracy theory blaming Israel for US TikTok ban.” At the same time, the ADL itself labeled claims that it had something to do with Israel’s “Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories.”

Similarly, upon the brief ban on the app in the United States, Newsweek published its own damage control piece entitled “New Israel TikTok Ban Theory Sweeps Through Social Media.” Unluckily for the ADL, corporate media and DC think tanks, the AIPAC-sponsored Congressmembers explicitly voiced their approval of the ban based on the view that it promoted anti-Israel content.

On top of this, pro-Israeli politicians have been condemning TikTok’s alleged spread of pro-Palestinian views way before any ban was ever proposed to begin with. For example, during the Republican primary debates in December 2023, candidate Nikki Hailey asserted, “We really do need to ban TikTok once and for all and let me tell you why,” explaining that “for every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that.”

Speculation online has it that the most serious bidder for taking over TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance. There is even unconfirmed talk that Meta has already purchased the company but is reluctant to announce it due to an ongoing legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission.

If Meta does take over TikTok, users fear that the censorship they once sought to avoid will be implemented there, too, thus achieving its desired results. Following the Hamas-led October 7 attacks of 2023, after which the genocide in Gaza began, around 150 different Zionist advocacy groups banded together to pressure Meta to censor pro-Palestinian content.

Meta not only has a documented history of hiring employees who were part of Israel’s infamous 8200 Unit of its military intelligence wing, but according to a recent investigation conducted by the BBC, the social media company actively censored Palestinian accounts on Facebook following the outbreak of the war in 2023.

Another name that floated as a potential buyer was Elon Musk, the current owner of X [formerly Twitter], who has his own history of censoring pro-Palestinian accounts and maintains a relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A less serious proposal has come from Youtuber MrBeast as a potential buyer, while Amazon had suggested in March of 2024 that it could move to purchase TikTok also.

Meanwhile, Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt also wants to purchase the app. On October 13, McCourt appeared on Fox News, live from Tel Aviv, to talk about “disinformation” and “misinformation” online surrounding the Gaza war. During the interview, Fox aired footage from a low-budget film on screen, labeling it “Hamas propaganda” to suggest that Palestinians were faking footage of dead civilians, a real-time example of the very disinformation they were discussing.

However, TikTok has already been experiencing serious issues with censorship related to anti-war and pro-Palestine content for some time, having hired former members of the Israeli military’s Unit 8200. Soon after the beginning of the war on Gaza, users complained that the platform was censoring various accounts that had once thrived, and months into the conflict, many of the viral TikTokers who were commenting on the issue were banned.

Feature photo | TikTok video streaming and sharing app is seen in this illustration photo taken in Warsaw, Poland on 20 January, 2025. Jaap Arriens | AP

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47

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