Billionaire Ellison Family Who Bought Paramount is Now Buying TikTok AND Warner

In August 2025, David Ellison’s Skydance Media, backed by the vast fortune of his father Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle Corporation), completed its acquisition of Paramount Global. This wasn’t simply a business transaction — it was the beginning of an unprecedented consolidation of American media power. The deal brought CBS, Paramount Pictures, MTV, Nickelodeon, and numerous other properties under the control of one of America’s wealthiest families.

But the Ellisons aren’t stopping there. Reports indicate they’re preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, which would add HBO, CNN, Warner Bros. studios, and DC Entertainment to their portfolio. Perhaps most significantly, Larry Ellison has been named by former President Donald Trump as a key figure in negotiations to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations — potentially giving the family control over the platform that shapes political consciousness for an entire generation of young Americans.

If these acquisitions succeed, the Ellison family would control: traditional broadcast networks, cable news, major film studios, streaming platforms, and one of the world’s most influential social media algorithms. This represents a concentration of narrative power unseen in the modern era.

The Billionaire Anxiety: American Decline and the Scramble for Control

To understand why this is happening now, we must examine the psychological and material conditions of America’s billionaire class in 2025. They are watching their world crumble — not in the sense of losing their wealth (though that’s a fear), but in the sense of losing the stable imperial order that generated and protected that wealth.

American global hegemony is weakening. The dollar’s dominance is being challenged. Infrastructure crumbles while China builds.

The social contract that kept the American working class pacified for decades — the promise that hard work leads to prosperity — has been thoroughly exposed as a lie. Millennials and Gen Z are the first generations in American history expected to be poorer than their parents. They cannot afford homes, healthcare, or education. They are drowning in debt for degrees that lead to gig economy jobs.

This creates a legitimacy crisis. When people can no longer believe in the system, they start looking for alternatives. They start asking dangerous questions: Why do we have billionaires while children go hungry? Why do we have empty houses and homeless people? Why are we funding wars abroad while our communities collapse?

The Billionaire Response: Control the Narrative

The billionaire class has concluded that the way forward isn’t to address these material conditions — that would require them to give up power and wealth. Instead, the strategy is to control the story being told about those conditions.

This is where “equitable distribution” rhetoric becomes useful. The messaging will be about “giving everyone a voice,” “platform neutrality,” “balanced coverage,” and “algorithmic fairness.” TikTok, in particular, will likely be framed as being “saved” from Chinese control and “protected” for American users. The Paramount-Warner merger will be sold as “creating jobs” and “competing with Netflix.”

But behind this progressive-sounding language lies a darker strategy: use narrative control to manage decline, deflect blame, and prevent class consciousness from forming.

What makes this different from traditional media ownership is the integration of algorithmic control with broadcast media. Previous generations of media moguls — the Hearsts, the Murdochs — controlled what stories were told. The Ellisons will control both the stories and the system that determines who sees them, when, and in what context.

Modern propaganda doesn’t work like Soviet-era information control. It doesn’t censor everything and force everyone to repeat the same slogans. Instead, it:

Floods the zone: Overwhelm people with content so they can’t distinguish signal from noise

Amplifies division: Promote contentious cultural issues that split the working class along identity lines

Manufactures complexity: Make every issue seem so complicated that ordinary people feel unqualified to have opinions

Offers false choices: Present two establishment positions as the full spectrum of acceptable debate

Algorithmic nudging: Subtly guide people toward certain conclusions while maintaining the illusion of choice

When you own TikTok’s algorithm plus CBS News plus CNN, you control the conversation at every level. You decide what “goes viral.” You decide which “experts” get platformed. You decide what questions journalists ask and which stories get follow-up coverage.

The genius of this system is that it can claim neutrality while systematically excluding certain perspectives.

Both “liberal” and “conservative” voices will be present — but both will operate within acceptable parameters. The debate will be about whether billionaires should pay 35% or 40% in taxes, not whether billionaires should exist. It will be about which countries deserve military intervention, not whether the U.S. should have a global military empire.

Turning Americans Against Each Other

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of consolidated media control is its ability to redirect legitimate grievances toward false enemies. Americans are angry — they should be angry. The system has failed them. But who gets blamed?

The Divide-and-Conquer Strategy

Rather than allowing anger to focus on the billionaire class that has extracted $50 trillion from workers over the past 50 years, media narratives redirect that anger:

Workers are told to blame immigrants for low wages (not the employers who pay those wages)

People struggling economically are told to resent those receiving government assistance (not the corporations receiving billions in subsidies)

Communities of color are pitted against poor white communities competing for the same scarce resources

Generations are turned against each other (Boomers vs. Millennials) over outcomes neither group controlled

Rural and urban Americans are portrayed as existential threats to each other’s “way of life”

This isn’t accidental. It’s strategic. As long as working-class Americans are fighting each other over cultural issues, they’re not organizing against the class that’s actually robbing them.

The Algorithm as Amplifier

TikTok’s algorithm is particularly powerful for this purpose. It learns what generates “engagement” (which means what triggers strong emotional reactions) and shows people more of it. Content that makes people angry, afraid, or tribally defensive spreads faster than content that builds solidarity or understanding.

If you control that algorithm, you can turn these tendencies up or down. You can decide whether the platform promotes content that builds cross-racial working-class solidarity or content that amplifies racial resentment. You can decide whether climate collapse is presented as an urgent crisis requiring systemic change or as a lifestyle issue about individual consumer choices.

The Palestinian Exception: When the Propaganda Fails

Despite massive media efforts to frame Israel’s actions in Gaza as “self-defense,” large segments of the American public — particularly young people — see it as what international legal experts call genocide.

They see this because of social media: unfiltered videos of children being killed, hospitals being bombed, and mass starvation being imposed as policy.

TikTok, before any potential Ellison acquisition, was a key platform where this counter-narrative spread. It’s where Palestinians could speak directly to American audiences without going through editorial gatekeepers who would “both sides” their annihilation.

The Establishment Response

The bipartisan response has been revealing:

Massive congressional support for continuing weapons shipments to Israel (with minimal dissent)

Attempts to ban or force the sale of TikTok, explicitly citing its role in shaping young people’s views on Gaza

Accusations of antisemitism against protesters and critics of Israeli policy

Crackdowns on campus protests using police violence

Threats to cut funding to universities that don’t suppress Palestine solidarity activism

This is what power looks like when it feels threatened: the mask comes off. The “free speech” crowd demands censorship. The “anti-authoritarian” voices call for police crackdowns. The “both sides” media suddenly has no patience for Palestinian perspectives.

Why Palestine Matters to This Story

The Gaza genocide represents everything the billionaire class fears about uncontrolled media: people seeing reality with their own eyes and coming to unauthorized conclusions.

If Americans — especially young Americans — can correctly identify a genocide happening in real-time, despite their government’s complicity and their media’s obfuscation, what else might they correctly identify?

They might notice that the same weapons manufacturers profiting from Gaza also profit from bloated Pentagon budgets. They might notice that the politicians voting for weapons shipments receive donations from those manufacturers. They might notice that media companies owned by billionaires reliably support policies that benefit billionaires.

They might develop class consciousness.

This is the nightmare scenario for oligarchs. And it explains the desperate scramble for narrative control.

The Larger Picture: Managed Decline vs. Democratic Transformation

What we’re witnessing is a choice point for American society, though it’s not being presented as such.

The Oligarchic Path

The billionaire class is choosing managed decline. They’ve concluded that American empire cannot be maintained in its current form, but they believe they can manage its downward trajectory in a way that preserves their wealth and power. This requires:

Narrative control to prevent accurate diagnosis of problems

Militarized police to contain inevitable unrest

Scapegoating vulnerable groups to redirect anger

Just enough distribution of resources to prevent complete social breakdown

Surveillance infrastructure to identify and neutralize threats to the system

The Ellison media empire is a piece of this infrastructure. It’s not about making money from media properties (Larry Ellison has more money than he could spend in a thousand lifetimes). It’s about controlling the story of American decline.

The Alternative Path

The alternative would be democratic transformation: wealth redistribution, public investment in communities, dismantling of imperial infrastructure, and genuine participatory democracy. This would require the billionaire class to give up their power.

They will not do this voluntarily.

Why They’re Scared

The billionaire class is scared because they know their wealth is ultimately based on our consent. If enough people stop believing in property rights that allow one person to own billions while others starve, those property rights become meaningless.

If enough people stop believing that police exist to protect “order,” police lose their authority. If enough people recognize that money is just a social agreement we could change, the whole system becomes negotiable.

The only thing protecting billionaire wealth is our collective belief that it’s legitimate, natural, and unchangeable. Media control is about maintaining that belief system as material conditions make it increasingly untenable.

What This Means for the Future

If the Ellison media consolidation succeeds — and it likely will, given regulatory capture and bipartisan elite support — we can expect:

Increased Narrative Homogeneity

Despite surface-level diversity of viewpoints, the range of “acceptable” debate will narrow. Certain questions won’t be asked. Certain possibilities won’t be discussed.

Algorithmic Social Engineering

Platforms will be tuned to promote content that divides workers, discourages collective action, and frames all problems as individual rather than systemic.

Selective Enforcement of “Standards”

Content that challenges elite power will face aggressive moderation for violating community standards, while content that promotes elite interests will flourish regardless of accuracy or harm.

Integration of Surveillance and Media

Expect increasing coordination between platform data, consumer data, and security state surveillance — all in the name of fighting “misinformation” or “extremism.”

The Illusion of Choice

Multiple platforms and networks will exist, creating the appearance of diversity, but will be ultimately controlled by a small group of billionaires with aligned interests.

Resistance and Alternatives

This is not inevitable. History shows that consolidated power always provokes resistance:

Decentralized Alternatives

Support for federated social networks, independent journalism platforms, and community-owned media infrastructure.

Digital Literacy

Education that helps people recognize propaganda techniques and algorithmic manipulation.

Regulatory Action

Though captured regulators are unlikely to act, public pressure can sometimes force antitrust enforcement.

Direct Action

Boycotts, strikes, and protests can create economic and reputational costs for media oligopolies.

Building Counter-Institutions

Creating alternative structures for information sharing and community organization outside billionaire-controlled platforms.

Most importantly: recognizing that this is fundamentally a class struggle. The billionaires consolidating media power are not neutral actors trying to build better platforms. They are a threatened ruling class trying to maintain control during a period of imperial decline and ecological crisis.

The Ellison media empire is not just a business story. It’s a story about who gets to tell the story of our time.

As American empire declines, as climate catastrophe accelerates, as inequality reaches breaking points — who controls the narrative about what’s happening and what’s possible?

Will we have media that helps us understand our real conditions and imagine democratic alternatives? Or will we have media that keeps us confused, divided, and passive while a small oligarchic class manages our decline in ways that preserve their power?

The consolidation of Paramount, Warner Bros., and TikTok under Ellison family control suggests the billionaire class has made its choice. The question is whether we’ll accept it — or whether we’ll build something different.

Because here’s what they know and fear: you cannot maintain a grossly unequal society without controlling the story people tell about that inequality. The moment enough people see clearly, the moment enough people recognize their common interests across the false divisions — that’s when everything changes.

That’s why they’re buying the megaphones. That’s why they’re writing the algorithms. That’s why they’re so desperate to control what goes viral and what disappears.

They’re not afraid of our anger. They’re afraid of our clarity.