Oh no! Anyway…
It’s going to be to their advantage to claim that they’re shutting down, even if they actually want that $50B buyout. If they say they’re going to sell, they’re going to lose what little leverage they have left. The public that wants TikTok will get TikTok, and the public is going to stop pestering politicians about it.
I read it as a bluff too.
They’re between a rock and a hard place, their best position is to play hardball and rile up their users.
Yeah, it means nothing to us to leave. We’re losing money!
If that were really the case why are they in the US at all? Because they know they can make money and their market position is strong.
Because China is trying to influence the US and they need to be in the US market for that
This is why the whole situation exists, IMO if there was a reason to believe China is trying to influence united states citizens, then this wouldn’t even be a discussion. There are probably hundreds of Chinese companies that operate in the US, why is tik tok signaled out? Because there’s probably a reason they’re being singled out. It might be nothing, but I’m inclined to think that the people who signed the bill know more than what they’re letting on for national security reasons.
Look at any security analysis done on it and you’ll see the insane amount of information it collects from every single user is absolutely stunning. They definitely use their influence and knowledge of individuals to drive opinion of those who use their platform.
There are probably hundreds of Chinese companies that operate in the US, why is tik tok signaled out?
Because it’s an enormous company with a lot of influence on people. If they actually influence people in that way, I don’t know but they could quite easily.
Personally I don’t care about TikTok.
Yeah I watched this dude show me a video of a device that opens jars and now I am thinking about becoming a spy for the Chinese government.
But they can’t continue to make money this way. It will be seen as control. So they’re stuck creating a competitor or just writing off the US market.
Yeah I think they’re angling for a reversal, if not they’ll sell and probably take some massive non voting share of the venture along with a bunch of billionaires.
They won’t sell lol, like why would they? If they truly are owned by the Chinese government why would they sell it to an American company?
The public [who] wants TikTok will get TikTok
In my family and peer group, the people who want to use tiktok and the people who could get and use a VPN to access a side-loaded tiktok app, has no intersect group. It’s just a bridge too far for all of them.
I’ll push them onto the fediverse yet.
Worst part about Lemmy being a tech heavy space is that so many users spout shit like “They’re not banning it, just deplatforming it” like yes, dipshit, that’s effectively a ban for something like 99% of people. You think 100,000,000 people are gonna fucking sideload the app? Love this place but it can be a bubble sometimes.
Deplatforming is equivalent to banning in basically every instance. The public town square doesn’t exist in the digital world we all operate in. Change my mind.
Situations like this are a good opportunity to increase the rate of tech literacy in a broader population or to promote decentralized solutions, but unfortunately that’s a pipe dream.
Fediverse TikTok = TikToot?
The public that wants TikTok will get TikTok, and the public is going to stop pestering politicians about it.
Has their user base mobilized at all? Maybe it’s just because I don’t use TikTok but I haven’t really heard much from their users about the ban. Which has been kind of unexpected.
Apparently TikTok sent out push notifications telling users to call their representatives. Minors were being provided instructions with their representatives’ phone numbers and contact info, but didn’t even know who they were calling and were asking basic questions like “What is Congress?”
Kind of shows the amount of power TikTok has over American youth.
I love how they demonstrated they aren’t influencing people by sending out a mass message telling people what to do. It doesn’t get any more comical than that.
Malign influence. Telling people to participate in democracy isn’t a bad thing.
Yes but telling an army of thirteen year olds doing dance videos to call representatives is worthless, if anything it hurts TikToks argument since it proves they’re doing the influencing of Americans that the government wants them not doing
So you’ve never used TikTok. Good to know.
You missed the entire point. They declared 1) We are not doing anything of that sort, then: 2) they did exactly things of that sort. It’s like a slap stick comedy show.
And facebook tells its users to vote. Encouraging people to make their voices heard and engage in the democratic process is a good thing.
I’d say absolutely, if Cambridge Analytica wasn’t a thing. I’d honestly rather have people not vote than be motivated to go vote because they think the liberal communists are putting fluoride in water to make frogs gay.
It’s somehow always the organizations and individuals who are trying to manipulate people that seem to care the most about people’s voices being heard in politics. Churches, social media, daytime TV, that crazy uncle you don’t like to talk to at family gatherings…
Hey some of us are the crazy cousin saying you should vote while also advocating pissing on the floor when your job tries to deny bathroom rights.
I’d prefer to have you as my cousin instead of the one I have who hates brown people and believes Trump won the 2020 election.
Only if ya can deal with ranting about how modern cars suck due to overuse of electronics and half crazed rants about guns and how we should bring back neighborhood militias.
“Vote to participate in democracy! Here’s some local voting resources”
vs
“Vote to protect our interests! Tell your representative that they are killing free speech if they don’t listen to me”
An enemy state giving kids a script of nonsense to harass politicians with is absolutely not a good thing.
Rival is better than enemy, but yes. We’re as friendly with China as we are enemies. It’s complicated, but I don’t want the simple version to be the narrative.
They’re not a rival. They’re a hostile power.
We are both dependent on each other because that’s how the global economy works, but we are not friends and there is no possible path to friendship unless one of our countries has an extremely bloody revolution and completely changes our mechanism of government.
Our core ideologies are not compatible.
You just haven’t been paying attention.
When you’re forced to participate in capitalism, your only option is to play the game. I agree, this is mostly just a bluff.
Why though? Why would they give up their trade secrets? They have a global market.
They could sell the user accounts and content and let another company clip that into their own recommendation algo.
I’ve been a part of a few tech acquisitions that have worked this way. They keep their secret sauce but hand over the community.
The question is if anyone would buy it without the algorithm and the other stuff worth money. Users by themselves aren’t very useful if everyone leaves after a day.
It would come down to price. I’m sure someone would pay for the content, accounts, and brand. But what dollar amount are we talking about when the algo isn’t on the table.
The algorithm either isn’t as valuable as they believe or the government’s concern is legitimate and we have a real problem.
Yeah that’s certainly possible. I just don’t think it will go the way people are thinking.
Makes sense from a business point of view. Why sell to create a new competitor with the same technology and an impregnable market base in the USA?
Better to force US competition to start from scratch.
I mean the sale agreement could require the buyer to never expand outside the US.
For money. Whoever buys it has to pay you for it. Shutting down just means leaving a gaping hole in American social media that some other company will fill and you’ll be in the same position but with less money.
Yeah I agree, there really is no incentive for a for-profit company to choose shutting down over selling. Unless they never cared about profit and had ulterior motives from the very beginning.
YouTube/IG are hardly starting from scratch.
But they don’t have the international reach of TikTok.
IG is owned by FaceBook which actually has about double the userbase of TikTok if you don’t count DouYin’s 700 Million. I kind of hope that they also fuck up and trigger Section I if not full blown Section H of the bill.
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Not really, they would still be operating the same business in every other part of the world, except for the US. So you’d then have US Tiktok competing with World Tiktok. They can’t be forced to sell the global operations due to a mandate from some American court, no matter how much they think to be the world police.
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US tiktok won’t operate outside USA.
Says who?
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The sales agreement that you have read?
The law that they are trying to pass… they are not wrong either.
Do it.
TikTok’s daily active users in the U.S. is also just about 5% of ByteDance’s DAUs worldwide, said one of the sources.
So much drama in the US over this but it’s apparently merely a money-losing afterthought for its owner.
It’s almost like making money is not the primary purpose of this website 🤔
Or … maybe the US isn’t the only country in the world?
Lmao yeah OK 👍. Name any other country.
I have a Geography degree lmao, but also, you’re an asshole. I don’t even know what you’re trying to accomplish with this comment.
he’s being sarcastic (im pretty sure)
Your sensing of humour is failing.
Didn’t seem like a joke to me, just seemed dismissive and rude. 🤷🏻♂️ People on this site frequently pull this 🤓oh yeah name a whatever🤓 shit unironically, so unless Lemmy gets a culture makeover I’m going to assume people are being assholes.
All that talking and you still ain’t even named one other country besides united states. The whole world is united States.
Fwiw I’m not American.
It’s not worth anything, your argument was that the US being such a small percentage of tiktoks userbase meant that the American market is only worthwhile to TikTok as a spying tool. Which does not make any sense.
I’m saying that tiktok has other markets in other countries, and the US only represents a small part of their global reach, so of course tiktok would only be a small percentage of their userbase.
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Yeah same with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, fox news, CNN, News max, Msnbc and every single other media outlet by that logic. Apparently any company not owned Merica is propaganda too.
This means absolutely nothing.
How much of their advertising revenue comes from the US. They have shopping, I’ll bet the US buys the most.
China already has livestream shopping, it’s still relatively novel in the US. Bytedance has to compete with other local competitors in China, hating a nice external source of revenue in the US fuelling these Chinese battle is a huge boon.
I know the article says loss making app, but I bet a lot of money goes back to R&D creating the loss. They pay massive sums to get merchants to sell on their app for example.
This means absolutely nothing. How much of their advertising revenue comes from the US.
To quote the article again, “The U.S. accounted for about 25% of TikTok overall revenues last year, said a separate source with direct knowledge.” Honestly, I think that makes the case for shutting it down even stronger. TikTok isn’t in some growth-at-all-costs phase in the US. It’s likely near its peak potential userbase. If they haven’t been able to make it profitable by now, that doesn’t bode well for it ever becoming significantly profitable. Absent the legal issues, they think it’s still worth at least trying, but as it stands, it’s just a lot of money in and, just as quickly, out, with nothing to show for it at the end of the day.
You’re assuming its a profit-focused endeavor rather than a propaganda arm of the Chinese government.
I think it’s a privately-owned, profit-focused endeavor that is nevertheless beholden to the Chinese government and which the government wants to take as much advantage of as possible. Deep down, I’m certain that their sole goal is to make as much money for themselves as they possibly can. If they also need to exfiltrate some data and send it to the CCP, that’s just a necessary business expense.
Bro, Facebook facilitated a genocide, and this is who we want to buy TikTok? What action was taken against fb?
“US coRpOrAtiOn goOd!”
Not US corporation good, just US corporation = US controlled. This isn’t a morality play, it’s a national security play.
5% of customers driving 25% of revenue is a market you want to invest in.
Amazon wasn’t profitable for how many years? It’s the exact same play. Take a loss to create something artificially desirable, strangle the competition and lock up your walled garden, then crank the prices.
I’ve talked with merchants TikTok Shop recruited, TikTok was paying them a ton to sell there, eating their processing fees, their shipping costs, and paying for massive discounts to customers so they could juice their metrics.
They’re starting to crank up their fees this spring and summer.
Same with advertising, advertisers want to go to TikTok, but I’m sure most of the actual spend is happening outside the app on influencers. TikTok wants that pie too.
Taking a loss means nothing in this context
Also, hard to quantify how much of the popularity of tiktok is driven by US content globally, versus locally. You lose all that UGC is you cut out US
“Livestream shopping” is that like QVC or something?
Yeah, kinda
You watch TikTok, someone shills a product, you buu it with a button that pops up, or you click into their store to buy their cosmetics line.
EU next please
Don’t use it if you don’t like it, but don’t give this bullshit Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda control of something just because you don’t like it.
It’s just as bad or good as any other algorithm based content app like Facebook or Instagram. If we have a problem with privacy for example then go after that like with gdpr.
I think you have it backwards, in that it’s the US that’s trying to stop all the Chinese propaganda coming from that app.
And if TT pull out of the US, it’s pretty telling that their core drive for that thing wasn’t money.
Why would a tech company sell their product to another competitor in such a big landscape like US? It’s quite very much because of money.
Well for one, because if they don’t then they will get precisely 0 money. If it is indeed about the money then we would absolutely expect them to sell no? Otherwise… There’s no money
0 money from us market. They still have a big market outside US. Why would they sabotage it by giving an advantage to a competitor. No money is better than negative money.
While they would no longer be competing in the US market, any ‘competitor’ would have to do the work of gaining billions of customers in other countries, that are already entrenched into Tik Tok user space. I think that worry is kinda moot if you’re TT leadership.
If France passes a law requiring Google to sell Google France to a French company, would Google pulling out instead of selling mean their core drive in France wasn’t money?
Google is an American company. Apples and Oranges.
I don’t think it’s primarily about the algorithm or “Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” but instead about data and company ownership. Currently the US and EU are far closer allies with each other than with china. Services that are owned/controlled by their countries are therefore prioritized, and competing services from non-ally countries are way more scrutinized.
We already sanction TV stations because of their propaganda content e.g. Russia Today. I see this as no different.
Then the EU would need some evidence of propaganda.
I dislike TikTok but should you really be banning platforms you don’t like?
Sanction them if they misbehave, yes. Prevent most of the population from communicating using it? Absolutely not.
Americans have weird priorities when it comes to freedom. The mental gymnastics I’ve been seeing trying to justify a ban of a platform to a massive population of people is nuts.
No, it isn’t “actually upholding” freedom of speech to ban TikTok.
Congress believes it’s a national security threat which is probably true but they haven’t bothered explaining this to their constituents at all. Ideally they’d pass comprehensive privacy protection laws to setup standards that both domestic and foreign companies would be subject to. Then companies either adjust their behaviors and meet a certain level of transparency or they would be prosecuted under the law.
But no… We get this instead: a confusing and obviously targeted ultimatum with Congress telling everyone ‘trust me bro this is the only way’.
I don’t think most Americans want tiktok banned . Unfortunately the US government just does what ever they want and right now there is too much pro Palestine information on tiktok .
should you really be banning platforms you don’t like?
Yes, but only if that platform is Twitter
lol you think “freedom of speech” includes foreign adversary right to harvest American citizen data?
Exactly. I only want my data to be harvested by the NSA. It feels more patriotic.
but chyna bad duh
So be it. The vaccuum it will leave will get filled by another platform.
The whole point of this bill is for mark zuckerberg’s lobbying money to finally get people to use Reels
Reels and YouTube shorts both suck, the algorithms push the most asinine content, or stuff I saw on tiktok MONTHS ago.
This the goal of this bill.
This is obviously a negotiation tactic.
If ByteDance doesn’t want to sell their stupid algorithm, they could simply rip it out of TikTok, replace it with a random number generator or any other off-the-shelf recommendation engine, and proceed with the sale.
Find their lowest paid summer intern from the university computer science department, tell him to write some sort of recommendation algorithm and he has two weeks to do it, then whatever he comes up with make it live and that’s all the new owner gets.
I doubt the recommendation algorithm is particularly special, the userbase is the more important thing IMO. However, any purchaser would need to implement something decent if they want to maintain that userbase.
Obv without the algorithm TikTok loses some value. However it loses less value than if they just pull the plug.
It’s like Twitter. Yeah, it lost a bunch of value when Musk gutted it, but it’s still relevant today. So if someone less hostile to the core userbase buys it, I don’t think some growing pains from a change in algorithm would kill it.
Good. Please proceed as quickly as possible.
The amount of people happy about their government deciding to ban websites and apps is terrifying. They dont give a fuck about your privacy they’re just mad they dont control the algorithm. Now they can have people move to instagram reels where its easier to serve the propaganda the oligarchs prefer
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And facebook isnt? Facebook did experiments on teens to see if theyre easier to manipulate when theyre depressed. They took money to apread fake news to manipulate voters for the presidential election. Yall are so blinded by the china boogeyman its absurd
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Does anyone even use FB anymore besides boomers?
Ok, so boomers are not actually people, facebook’s 3 billion active users don’t exist, and 250 million of those fake people are certainly not from the fake US.
But TikTok…
Amazing how we are talking of Chinese surveillance while the US just renewed another one of its surveillance bills.
So much “I am immune to, and can spot all propaganda” in this thread.
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His point would be legit and fine if he didn’t tack on the “only I am right and you are wrong” part.
It’s true that we should be passing something like GDPR that ensures privacy in all apps, and not just TikTok.
But I’m certainly in favor of going after TikTok regardless. I hope Facebook and Google and Reddit and Apple are next on the list.
mic_drop
If tiktok can be considered owned by the Chinese gov so can facebook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM theres tons of programs secret and public that shows american tech companies have to obey to the US government demands.
Boomers vote more than anyone else
Facebook owns all the biggest apps, instagram whatsapp, and now threads is getting bigger than twitter. Great lets kill competition because scary china boogeyman all put all the power in the hands of mark zuckerberg, the conservatives that manipulate the platform and pay to manipulate the people on it.
If tiktok can be considered owned by the Chinese gov so can facebook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM theres tons of programs secret and public that shows american tech companies have to obey to the US government demands.
“In 2014, ByteDance established an internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee.[47] The company’s vice president, Zhang Fuping, serves as the company’s CCP Committee Secretary.[48][49]”
This is not a defense of FB or american companies, but rather an indictment of tiktok and an acknowledgement that the degree of CCP involvement in tiktok is not the same as neolib involvement in FB.
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PRISM and countless programs arent conspiracies they are facts. The US isnt totalitarian to their citizens but they are to the millions of people who’s countries theyve placed fascists into power to kill and imprison their citizens
So why did the PRISM project exists? If there is freedom to deny the government access why did american companies all get in bed with it? This is also not a conspiracy since Snowden will be jailed if he steps foot in american soil.
It is possible to both be anti-chinese government and also want comprehensive privacy laws in the US. Like, I absolutely buy that the Chinese government has access to tiktok data. I, however, don’t think forcing a sale is the right way to deal with any of this. Comprehensive privacy and data collection laws would go much farther towards making it so it doesn’t really matter who owns what.
👀
Small fediverse lol
You wanna talk Chinese spyware, why are they not outright banning Temu? That’s a much better documented case of actually being spyware.
In terms of Tiktok being spyware, they are tracking users in much the same ways that every other big social media company is. Should other nations be worried about Facebook sharing that data with the US govt to produce psyops campaigns against foreign nations?
I’m against any country blocking access to things in the name of “national security” and providing little to no evidence on it. Its been done too many times to trojan horse in other malicious activities that governments want to do.
For spyware the cyber security community seems pretty meh about it…
The u.s. still wouldn’t control the algorithm even if bytedance sold because they are not required to sell to a u.s. company. As long as the new company isn’t controlled by the ccp(or probably also russ, n Korea, iran) the u.s. doesn’t care who owns it.
Don’t threaten us with a good time!
Good, that’ll decrease the amount of stupidity in the platform for the international audiences to enjoy
That’s fine, but I think they are lying.
And in case you don’t understand, foreign corporations running FARA-unregistered influence operations isn’t considered a facet of “free speech” in the USA.
Okay great. Prove it in court.
There’s no legal case to be had.
The constitution grants congress effectively unlimited power to regulate international trade. Citizens have rights. Foreign actors do not.
That hasn’t been true for 70 years.
This seems to be a pattern. Govts flex over tech companies, techs blackout a country instead of complying, repeat.
That happens when the government doesn’t create the technology LIKE IN COUNTLESS CIVILIZATION SIMULATORS
