TikTok Sold to the Cronies
How Oracle, Palantir and Murdoch loyalists turned a forced “sale” into the biggest voter-data grab in U.S. history—and why deleting the app is the only vote left that counts.
Facebook and other social media have been tested in other countries and have proved effective in swaying elections and even fueling conflict. TikTok, the company with the most successful algorithm in American social media, came under fire for being owned by Chinese media conglomerate ByteDance. It went back and forth in the branches of government, but eventually stalled. The Biden administration kicked the can down the road so far that it landed back in Trump’s lap at the start of his second term. He has now carried forward the plan where it left off: selling TikTok to American companies. Now the play begins, the players.
Larry Ellison worked on a database project for the CIA. The project was called Oracle, and once he finished it Ellison started a database company called Oracle. Larry is also a mega Trump donor, a theme you will find in all of these buyers. It is hard to imagine that the government will not have access to any information Oracle receives, and all of the app’s traffic will sit on Oracle servers.
Both Palantir and Peter Thiel could be their own article, but here the focus is Palantir’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica, the company at the center of the Facebook data scandal, and its pattern of sketchy partners. Palantir has gone on record saying it was unaware that one of its employees was working for Cambridge Analytica while on the Palantir payroll. The firm also held unofficial meetings with Cambridge Analytica and swapped emails about data usage, it also works with the IDF. Palantir helps the IDF locate targets in Gaza, no job is too dirty for Palantir if the check clears. It now takes money from ICE to hand over the data ICE needs to do its bidding, and it will not hesitate to do corporate bidding either. Oh, and Peter Thiel is a big Trump guy. I wonder what Palantir will do with all the TikTok information it is about to receive.
One in five adults now gets the majority of their news from TikTok. That is a fun fact, unless you run the largest media conglomerate in America. The Murdoch family owns Fox, and its cash cow Fox News is bleeding viewers. In the old school American tradition of hard work and free markets, the Murdochs are doing exactly what you expect: lobbying to ban their competition and then buying that competition by rewarding the president’s allies. Not only will they profit from renting the most powerful algorithm in U.S. social media, they will also control the censorship dial. The app is now a conservative social media network that siphons user information to companies with zero ethics around personal privacy.
The common thread among the main players in this hostile takeover is that all of them are Trump’s inner circle. From data to content, TikTok can now be treated as conservative state media. Anything that makes the administration look bad can be quietly throttled, no doubt it will be. Dissent can be moderated using server logs Oracle stores and Palantir mines. Palantir can also hand deliver in depth voter files to the White House. This is the perfect setup to steal an election through social media.
Unfortunately, the time to cut ties with the app is here. You must delete your TikTok profile. The app is no longer safe for users, it is owned by Trump cronies. It is a major sacrifice, but it is a necessary one that keeps you safe and keeps money out of the loyalists’ pockets. Rejecting this unethical, hostile takeover of our beloved platform demands that we take action.
Stay woke,
Loc
Sources:
Pew Research Center. “1 in 5 Americans Now Regularly Get News on TikTok, Up Sharply from 2020.” Pew Research Short Reads, 25 Sept. 2025.
Allyn, Bobby. “Palantir Wins New Tech Contracts after Trump’s Return to Power.” NPR, 1 May 2025.
Cadwalladr, Carole. “Palantir Employee Worked with Cambridge Analytica on Facebook Data.” The Guardian, 28 Mar. 2018.
