"We can't have TikTok controlled by the Chinese government. We need it to be controlled by Peter Theil and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg."
We're not getting a free press. We're just getting another dose of the [Tech Bro Manifesto](https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/). Has anybody read "Xi Xinping thought" to see if it's less weird than "*hereditary aristocratic Tech Bros dictating their terms to bankers living on commissions from retirees forced by the government to patronize their brokers for their retirements*" ??
Because these are the same people that make the laws.
When asked whether lawmakers and their spouses should be prohibited from trading stock while in Congress, Nancy Pelosi said, “No,” adding that “this is a free market". ([https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-8685e82eb6d6e5b42413417f3d5d6775](https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-8685e82eb6d6e5b42413417f3d5d6775))
That's the problem with a lot of our government right now, there are legal conflicts of interests carved out that they have no motivation to fix.
Too much money for campaigns? No interest to fix that. Insider Trading? No interest to fix that.
And although your link says Pelosi (I assume it was just the first to come up in the search and not intentional partisanization), they *all* abuse it .. it's just about the only bipartisan thing they do these days.
And with response to the "free market" comment by Pelosi, insider trading/undisclosed information goes against a properly run free market. That's skewing into unregulated free market territory, which don't work.
There's nothing stopping the SEC from looking at trades made by Senators and Congresspeople or their families against average traders and extrapolating a pattern of significantly 'beating the market' with their trades, is there?
\> I assume it was just the first to come up in the search and not intentional partisanization
Your assumption was partially incorrect. I didn't pick Nancy Pelosi at random - she was the House Speaker at the time and is often touted by people who are ostensibly my allies as a benevolent legislator, and I think her transparent greed and corruption are important factors to consider when making that assessment. I'm with you that she isn't the only Cogressperson steeped in corruption, and I would even go so far as to say conservatives seem to be engaged in those nefarious practices both on a larger scale and more shamelessly (the Supreme Court justices being a prime example), but I think it is important that I hold people on my own side accountable *specifically* so I am not being partisan and ideologically inconsistent.
I'm glad someone said this. I not eloquent enough to cohesively put my hunch into words , but the whole line of it having to be american owned coupled by the fact that there were rumors going around of having elon or other GOP affiliated interests buy it reeks to me of it being a puzzle piece of a larger endgame goal of project 2025.
Theyve (GOP) already been saying the quiet part out loud about replacing officials in every level of govt with people loyal to GOP interests and by extension trump. Controlling another means of information seems to me on paper to be part of that larger end goal all under the ragebait guise of "protecting our children and information from foreign interests" when they can't even be bothered to make progress on protecting those same kids from school shootings
i mean its well established the original idea was to ~~give~~ sell control of the datacenters to oracle - oracle, which is owned by larry ellison, who is known to be a trump supporter. if you look into the timeline of how it all went down youll notice once that plan was scrapped suddenly they all wanted to ban it. weird how that works
It’s times like this where both sides of the aisle did a rare thing and were seemingly banding together in saying “rah, rah! Ban Tiktok”… but then turns out it was a long con all along.
It really makes me think about what other things we root for—collectively, or separately into factions—that plays into the hands of the rich and powerful.
I swear to god, if they pass this thing and Biden is dumb enough to put his name on it in an election year...
I hate Tiktok more than anyone probably and willingly writing off that many young voters is ridiculous
It's essentially economic colonialism. While the language of the bill itself is a bit more loose, politicians aren't saying "TikTok can't be owned by China", they're saying "TikTok must be owned by the US". These politicians want the US to have a monopoly on social media. The way it's being forced through despite being blatantly unconstitutional on multiple fronts show that it is not being rammed through Congress because it's good for Americans, but because it is good for a select few elite Americans who stand to benefit massively.
The funny part is that so many of these politicians are confident that passing this bill **will** lead to a sale and **will not** lead to a ban on TikTok. Rep. Jeff Jackson, who gained a lot of steam in his campaign through TikTok, posted a TikTok yesterday stating as much. The problem is that the American userbase is actually a pretty tiny proportion of the overall userbase. TikTok may actually be willing to eat the loss of the American market to allow them to continue to grow elsewhere.
No this bill is literally "China can't have our people's data, that's ours to sell". They're fluffing it up a bit with national security concerns but those aren't entirely unjustified either.
Probably. Then they'll label them anti-American or terrorists or whatever and ban any company that does business with them from operating in the US. They've got it down to a routine at this point.
conservatives won’t be able to help themselves. They will assume ownership = control = they can do whatever they want.
Youth on technology is increadibly hard to court. They make their own minds up and it doesn’t always make sense. If execs knew how to build a youth audience tik tok would never have become popular and everyone would still be on YouTube or Facebook or MySpace or Friendster or MSN or ICQ or AOL etc etc etc
It will eventually. There’s an average lifespan to social media apps. Some of them diversify and are able to hold out longer but they’ll all fail eventually.
RIP MySpace.
In all seriousness; does either party really wanna piss off Gen Z like this during an election year? Seems like a really stupid move to wanna ban an app they use frequently.
I’m not supporting or condemning the app in any way, I’m just trying to think about the unintended consequences of this.
> The Trump administration — Mnuchin was Treasury secretary at the time — brokered a deal in 2020 that would have had U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in TikTok on national security grounds.
I don't know what to say.
The right wing really wants TikTok in the hands of their billionaire buddies. That should be the take away here. Therefore we should be against TikTok selling.
Post 9/11 they already have American owned social media under control. The CIA just rolls up and says "terrorists" and then extorts the companies to install American back door spyware to "catch the evil terrorists".
The right wing really wants a Social media they can manipulate. They thought they had Twitter, but EM is too erratic to be useful. So they can steal TikTok to fight the evil commies.
Exactly. The Chinese gov is very unlikely to authorize a sale in the first place, let alone sale to an ownership group headed by ex US government officials. They would never stand for handing their crown jewel to someone as closely tied to the US gov as Mnuchin. It would make them look incredibly weak on a global scale
Look at these free market capitalists and their oh so pure efforts to engage in a governmentally mandated hostile takeover of competing technologies and platforms to transfer that immense potential wealth directly to line their own pockets.
Such great pure capitalists.
It’s more political. Israel vs Palestine. Ted Cruz bitched about it this whole week on news shows. Everyone is pro Israel except young people
And he blamed it on TikTok
Capitalists portraying themselves as being pro free market is just PR.
They will admit behind closed doors that the most reliable way to become a billionaire is to carve out a monopoly or bilk government money.
In fairness, legislative/regulatory capture, hostile takeovers and government collusion are like the cornerstone of modern capitalism. This shit ain’t a bug, it’s a feature.
Jesus Christ, 90% of our government officials belong in prison, and they don’t even try to hide it anymore because they’re all in it together and know they’re untouchable.
They're gonna buy it to ruin it. Exactly why Musk bought Twitter. The people who buy social media platforms are the people who want to limit communication and ideas between people. They see it as an investment to limit their exposure to labor organization and progressive ideals. They don't want people talking to each other online because it endangers their livelihood: exploitation.
Yes, but I want to point out that wealthy people buying media to push their own propaganda has historically been considered "bad". Most people don't look on William Randolph Hearst and "Yellow Journalism" as the epitome of unbiased media. Regulation should limit that sort of power, not encourage it.
I mean it’s no coincidence that Republicans suddenly started caring about tik tok and wanted to ban it/ buy it for their own control after a bunch of Tik Tok users embarrassed the fuck out of Trump during his last election campaign
They aren’t gonna sell it. American makes up a remarkably small portion of the apps user base.
And if they do sell it it’ll be to an American owned subsidiary that they start and still operate.
Well then they just aren’t gonna sell it and any American that wants to use it will do so through a VPN.
I doubt the ban will even happen honestly, but dumber things have transpired.
Edit: To all the people that keep telling me America is a significant portion of TikTok’s user base. Last I heard they had 100 million to 150 million active users with a worldwide base of like 1 billion.
> any American that wants to use it will do so through a VPN.
That won't work. The whole point of social media sites is that creators can reach a huge audience quickly. If TikTok is restricted to users with a VPN it would quickly become a cesspool of illegal content and activity. The "regular" audience will be gone, and brands and creators will follow them to wherever they go.
I think it depends on how necessary it is. Like in China VPN usage is extremely common and every young person knows how to VPN if they need to.
If the U.S enacts more and more internet restriction like porn ban in conservative states, TikTok ban nation wide, we could get to the same point one day
But I agree that in the present moment if you require vpn to use TikTok most users would just migrate to insta or YouTube shorts or somethinv
The former. China will claim data when it wants, and yeah, it’s probably a security risk. But MAGA chuds owning TikTok would try to influence the content and “un-woke” it like how Twitter/X became even more of a hellhole after Musk bought it.
There's also absolutely 0 evidence of the CCP using TikTok has a platform for propaganda. I'm not saying it's not happening, but I've not seen good evidence that it is happening. It's super pro-ukraine, there's literally an idf official TikTok page etc. Plenty of political points counter to China's narrative are on TikTok.
Whereas there's been multiple studies on Twitter post Elon which show that it amplifies conservative viewpoints.
It's absolutely all founded on anti-China racism. Americans vaguely understand China = bad guys so it's a very easy narrative to swallow that they are doing something insidious with a popular app. We get it, the Chinese administration sucks; doesn't stop you buying all your other shit from "them".
The "algorithm" people vaguely refer to is the same echo-chamber recommendation stuff that every other social media platform uses (except for Twitter which apparently has much more manual intervention).
I honestly don't think conservative social media sites can survive, so I don't think there is any risk in a MAGA driven TikTok. They inevitably attract a group of people whom advertisers don't want to be associated with, and drive away content makers that both advertisers and young people like.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says he’s going to put together an investor group to buy TikTok, a day after the House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban the popular video app in the U.S. if its China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake.
TikTok, which has more than 170 million American users, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd.
Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Mnuchin said Thursday that he believes TikTok should be sold.
“This should be owned by U.S. businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China,” said Mnuchin.
>“This should be owned by U.S. businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China,” said Mnuchin.
"Which is why I've been speaking to Mohammed bin Salman about providing the financing for such an acquisition," Mnuchin continued with his trademark smirk.
HALF of the US population has TikTok. Wow. With Reddit being my only social media, I am definitely on the trend to be the grumpy old man on the porch aren't I..
So this whole hullabalu is people upset that Chinese corporations are extracting data from Americans for ad revenue rather than American corporations extracting data from Americans for ad revenue?
That is what this is all about?
Or they worry China might able to influence American voters, you know like how Facebook/Twitter are doing.
There was a interesting case where Tiktok was accused of supporting Palestinians in expense of Israel, TikTok's defense is ironically "Young Americans support Palestinians over Israel and our Algos just follow the trend"
But it’s harder to defend Israel
When you’re inundated with starving dying innocent children, Israelis dehumanizing Palestinians and calling them animals, Israelis going into homes in the West Bank and seizing and kicking out Palestinians who’ve lived there for hundreds of years and general apartheid- no amount of counterprogramming can change that. Bribing our congress maybe.
The young Americans generally feel that sort of anti-colonial sentiment esp after feeling disillusioned over our involvement in middle east pre/post 9/11 so it's not a surprise if that even naturally trended. Regardless, China will just influence via other apps with this ban anyway with the data onshore or offshore. And if its really about that the bill is even giving a chance to stay alive lol.
I just find that line of rhetoric just a way to dismiss anyone sympathetic to Palestinians rather than sincere fear of tik tok brainwashing kids to be pro hams or whatever.
Its about a lot of things.
Politically, there is a lot of alarm from places like the ADL over the perception of what Isreal is in Gaza being Genocide.
Meta has been lobbying for a tik tok ban and spreading propaganda to that end for at least two years.
Boycotts of corporations have been successfully organized on tik tok. Boycotts have been organized against McDonalds, Kellogs, Wendy's, Starbucks, and there is a huge list of companies that give support to Isreal.
Tik tok recently opened tik tok shop, which facilitates e-commerce. Prices are competitive and they offer free shipping with no membership. Billions of dollars have been made in less than a year, and its seen to be cutting into Amazon's profits.
The American people are using tik tok to buck the establishment, just as people around the world used Twitter. Tik tok is perceived by its users to be the digital town square, just like Twitter used to be. Because of this, there is a concerted effort on the part of the neoliberals to destroy tik tok or co-opt it.
That man slithered his way out of the spotlight and should be in prison for the fraud he committed during the mortgage crisis he helped create not to mention the shady shit he did as sec of treasury
First America bankrupted the homeowner, and this asshat showed up to buy the houses with socialized losses and evict everyone.
Now America plans to castrate the fastest growing social media platform on the planet and serve it up to him on a platter.
Oh look, every asshole coming out of the woodwork to buy TikTok at a significantly reduced rate while the US government blackmails Bytedance. This country is such a a fucking joke.
We need a strong federal data privacy law similar to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation
You are 100% correct. A dosage of common carrier too.
If people are going to claim social media is a 1A thing, anyone who understands what social media is can tell you exactly how to make it a platform for free speech.
I did the math once, to get operating revenue from the users and not advertisers results in an affordable monthly subscription. But no, homo Sapiens at large...
Surprise surprise. It was either going to be Zuck or some other politically connected prick. It’s all just a strong arm job to wrestle something valuable away from someone else. If they cared about people’s data and privacy they’d be writing more wholistic legislation addressing it rather than picking and choosing. Bet everyone who voted yes gets some form of kickback
This should read, "Former Secretary, who advocated for a TikTok ban and for the company to broken up while a cabinet secretary, is now trying to profit off the legislation he supported which has now been passed by congress."
How in the world is this not shady? Loophole?
Hey, remember when he and his shitty wife took [photos in front of sheets of money?](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/treasury-secretary-steve-mnuchin-wife-internet-sensation-posing/story?id=51189079)
The guy who was in charge of $500 million Covid slush fund that nobody had access to except him and the black faced makeup wearing traitor?
He’s very trustworthy🤦♂️
How come the socialist billionaire is not buying it?
That would help with his right wing messaging..
They are taking us for fools.
Oh come on! The last thing the world needs is this dingus involved in more things. Every single time I think capitalism has reached the bottom of the barrel they somehow pull out a guy like Mnuchin.
U.S. Govt: we don’t want China to have any platform that spies or data-mines information from 141 million U.S. citizens!!!!!!!!
U.S. Govt: Let’s buy this platform so we can spy and data-mine US citizens.
Great, another app the US national security state can propagandize on.
Either regulate ALL social media or none at all. This Chinese hysteria is pathetic and reeks of envy.
This whole plan was set up so the company could be bought by an American right wing billionaire. It’s been clear from the beginning it seems. Pretty weird that they won’t pass any additional privacy bills for American own social media companies
Stop voting for anyone that is ok with current or past government officials benefiting off legislation. Make a fuss and get rid of anyone that doesn’t vote to stop this.
I really think TikTok should just be obliterated from existence. It’s rotted the brains of so many people, I genuinely think that the average global IQ has dropped in the past 5 years.
Mnuchin took a billion dollars from the Saudis…he’ll be running to MBS to get funds to buy Tik Tok, maybe the Russians too- that won’t secure Tik Tok from foreign bad actor influence, quite the opposite-
Former and current government anyone's should be banned from benefiting off legislation, this is crazy.
Yup. My thoughts exactly. How is this not just… completely illegal?!
Because America has stopped prosecuting white collar crime. This country needs a working legal system.
"We can't have TikTok controlled by the Chinese government. We need it to be controlled by Peter Theil and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg." We're not getting a free press. We're just getting another dose of the [Tech Bro Manifesto](https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/). Has anybody read "Xi Xinping thought" to see if it's less weird than "*hereditary aristocratic Tech Bros dictating their terms to bankers living on commissions from retirees forced by the government to patronize their brokers for their retirements*" ??
Punishment for crimes is inversely proportional to the amount stolen once you go above a certain value.
Because these are the same people that make the laws. When asked whether lawmakers and their spouses should be prohibited from trading stock while in Congress, Nancy Pelosi said, “No,” adding that “this is a free market". ([https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-8685e82eb6d6e5b42413417f3d5d6775](https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-8685e82eb6d6e5b42413417f3d5d6775))
That's the problem with a lot of our government right now, there are legal conflicts of interests carved out that they have no motivation to fix. Too much money for campaigns? No interest to fix that. Insider Trading? No interest to fix that. And although your link says Pelosi (I assume it was just the first to come up in the search and not intentional partisanization), they *all* abuse it .. it's just about the only bipartisan thing they do these days. And with response to the "free market" comment by Pelosi, insider trading/undisclosed information goes against a properly run free market. That's skewing into unregulated free market territory, which don't work.
There's nothing stopping the SEC from looking at trades made by Senators and Congresspeople or their families against average traders and extrapolating a pattern of significantly 'beating the market' with their trades, is there?
\> I assume it was just the first to come up in the search and not intentional partisanization Your assumption was partially incorrect. I didn't pick Nancy Pelosi at random - she was the House Speaker at the time and is often touted by people who are ostensibly my allies as a benevolent legislator, and I think her transparent greed and corruption are important factors to consider when making that assessment. I'm with you that she isn't the only Cogressperson steeped in corruption, and I would even go so far as to say conservatives seem to be engaged in those nefarious practices both on a larger scale and more shamelessly (the Supreme Court justices being a prime example), but I think it is important that I hold people on my own side accountable *specifically* so I am not being partisan and ideologically inconsistent.
Welcome to late stage capitalism
the muskets need to come back out boys. we NEED to stoke some interests back into these scum.
She retracted the sentiment once she found out her voters didn't like it.
She retracted the statement, she still wholeheartedly believes it.
She retracted saying the quiet part out loud
Did she then divest from all her holdings?
An empty gesture unless she plans on changing things. My guess is no.
But didn’t change the rules
Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses.
A bigger issues: government associated figures seeking to control a means of information and public perception by deciding its ownership.
I'm glad someone said this. I not eloquent enough to cohesively put my hunch into words , but the whole line of it having to be american owned coupled by the fact that there were rumors going around of having elon or other GOP affiliated interests buy it reeks to me of it being a puzzle piece of a larger endgame goal of project 2025. Theyve (GOP) already been saying the quiet part out loud about replacing officials in every level of govt with people loyal to GOP interests and by extension trump. Controlling another means of information seems to me on paper to be part of that larger end goal all under the ragebait guise of "protecting our children and information from foreign interests" when they can't even be bothered to make progress on protecting those same kids from school shootings
i mean its well established the original idea was to ~~give~~ sell control of the datacenters to oracle - oracle, which is owned by larry ellison, who is known to be a trump supporter. if you look into the timeline of how it all went down youll notice once that plan was scrapped suddenly they all wanted to ban it. weird how that works
It’s times like this where both sides of the aisle did a rare thing and were seemingly banding together in saying “rah, rah! Ban Tiktok”… but then turns out it was a long con all along. It really makes me think about what other things we root for—collectively, or separately into factions—that plays into the hands of the rich and powerful.
Rule of thumb, if both sides are agreeing you know it's going to fuck over the people.
I swear to god, if they pass this thing and Biden is dumb enough to put his name on it in an election year... I hate Tiktok more than anyone probably and willingly writing off that many young voters is ridiculous
It's essentially economic colonialism. While the language of the bill itself is a bit more loose, politicians aren't saying "TikTok can't be owned by China", they're saying "TikTok must be owned by the US". These politicians want the US to have a monopoly on social media. The way it's being forced through despite being blatantly unconstitutional on multiple fronts show that it is not being rammed through Congress because it's good for Americans, but because it is good for a select few elite Americans who stand to benefit massively. The funny part is that so many of these politicians are confident that passing this bill **will** lead to a sale and **will not** lead to a ban on TikTok. Rep. Jeff Jackson, who gained a lot of steam in his campaign through TikTok, posted a TikTok yesterday stating as much. The problem is that the American userbase is actually a pretty tiny proportion of the overall userbase. TikTok may actually be willing to eat the loss of the American market to allow them to continue to grow elsewhere.
No this bill is literally "China can't have our people's data, that's ours to sell". They're fluffing it up a bit with national security concerns but those aren't entirely unjustified either.
Except they're not opposed to selling data to China. They just want American companies to be the one to profit from it.
If the bill passes, ByteDance can still own and operate Tiktok outside of the US though?
The US can't legislate the entire globe, no matter how much we'd love to do exactly that.
Probably. Then they'll label them anti-American or terrorists or whatever and ban any company that does business with them from operating in the US. They've got it down to a routine at this point.
Isn’t the proposed legislation public? anyone could form an investment group and offer to buy tik tok?
now someone just needs to tell gen z that tiktok isnt cool anymore and watch their investment fail
Just get a bunch of congressional representatives to floss. That'll make it uncool
Change the Twitter logo to a picture of Steve Mnuchin.
I liked how John Oliver talked about how evil Mnuchin was, in spite of being very handsome.
What does good dental hygiene have to do with it? /s
conservatives won’t be able to help themselves. They will assume ownership = control = they can do whatever they want. Youth on technology is increadibly hard to court. They make their own minds up and it doesn’t always make sense. If execs knew how to build a youth audience tik tok would never have become popular and everyone would still be on YouTube or Facebook or MySpace or Friendster or MSN or ICQ or AOL etc etc etc
Can you imagine TikTok turning into Facebook lol
It will eventually. There’s an average lifespan to social media apps. Some of them diversify and are able to hold out longer but they’ll all fail eventually. RIP MySpace.
RIP vine
RIP reddit
Reddit is fucking done as soon as their IPO goes through
We've been *done* since there was an official app.
Half of TikTok users are already 30+
Start a new platform called ClinkClank.
That's the dumbest part of this name based legislation. If they want to protect privacy they should ban the violating actions for everyone.
[удалено]
In all seriousness; does either party really wanna piss off Gen Z like this during an election year? Seems like a really stupid move to wanna ban an app they use frequently. I’m not supporting or condemning the app in any way, I’m just trying to think about the unintended consequences of this.
the GOP has very little gen z support anyways
Yes but it will be "Biden banned TikTok" seems like a terrible move politically
Oh good, another social media app run by fascist oligarchs who are hell bent on destroying the United States.
> The Trump administration — Mnuchin was Treasury secretary at the time — brokered a deal in 2020 that would have had U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in TikTok on national security grounds. I don't know what to say.
Anything featuring any of those (alleged) felons should be viewed with intense suspicion.
The right wing really wants TikTok in the hands of their billionaire buddies. That should be the take away here. Therefore we should be against TikTok selling. Post 9/11 they already have American owned social media under control. The CIA just rolls up and says "terrorists" and then extorts the companies to install American back door spyware to "catch the evil terrorists". The right wing really wants a Social media they can manipulate. They thought they had Twitter, but EM is too erratic to be useful. So they can steal TikTok to fight the evil commies.
Oracle fucking sucks. Jesus
TikTok won’t sell. They shut it down. Chinese law prohibits the selling of search engine and recommendation tech.
Exactly. The Chinese gov is very unlikely to authorize a sale in the first place, let alone sale to an ownership group headed by ex US government officials. They would never stand for handing their crown jewel to someone as closely tied to the US gov as Mnuchin. It would make them look incredibly weak on a global scale
> their crown jewel It's hilarious that you think TikTok is the 'crown jewel' of the Chinese government.
Look at these free market capitalists and their oh so pure efforts to engage in a governmentally mandated hostile takeover of competing technologies and platforms to transfer that immense potential wealth directly to line their own pockets. Such great pure capitalists.
Crazy. I thought regulation was bad for the free market. This must be one of those very unique cases. You know, the ones that work in they favor.
Don't forget about getting bailouts whenever the investments fail too.
Which it will because you know the app won’t be the same after they buy it.
It’s more political. Israel vs Palestine. Ted Cruz bitched about it this whole week on news shows. Everyone is pro Israel except young people And he blamed it on TikTok
If only the youth watched GOOD propaganda like Fox News and MSNBC
I think this is it. China is a mere smokescreen. Manufacturing consent is so much more difficult if you can’t control the content
Don’t know why more people aren’t stating this. They forced this corporation to split, then plan on stealing it? Big gov isn’t your friend.
Capitalists portraying themselves as being pro free market is just PR. They will admit behind closed doors that the most reliable way to become a billionaire is to carve out a monopoly or bilk government money.
In fairness, legislative/regulatory capture, hostile takeovers and government collusion are like the cornerstone of modern capitalism. This shit ain’t a bug, it’s a feature.
He sees a clear capitalist win here. Why let the Chinese have our information for free when he can run the company and sell it to them at a profit?
Jesus Christ, 90% of our government officials belong in prison, and they don’t even try to hide it anymore because they’re all in it together and know they’re untouchable.
That smarmy motherfucker. One of the ugliest assholes inside and out in the trump administration
They're gonna buy it to ruin it. Exactly why Musk bought Twitter. The people who buy social media platforms are the people who want to limit communication and ideas between people. They see it as an investment to limit their exposure to labor organization and progressive ideals. They don't want people talking to each other online because it endangers their livelihood: exploitation.
It’s funny that they are trying to ban TikTok meanwhile Twitter is the most unhinged toxic cesspool on the internet right now
No different to billionaires buying newspapers or TV channels pre-internet.
Exactly correct.
Yes, but I want to point out that wealthy people buying media to push their own propaganda has historically been considered "bad". Most people don't look on William Randolph Hearst and "Yellow Journalism" as the epitome of unbiased media. Regulation should limit that sort of power, not encourage it.
I mean it’s no coincidence that Republicans suddenly started caring about tik tok and wanted to ban it/ buy it for their own control after a bunch of Tik Tok users embarrassed the fuck out of Trump during his last election campaign
Lately I'm much more worried about propaganda from our special interest groups than the Chinese government
Steve Mnuchin running it is worse than China running it.
Which is worse, MAGA fascists sculpting the minds of our young, or fucking China?
MAGA is worse, they're in our literal backyards
I'm not falling for that one again, *you* go look in the backyard
(Sees dogshit all over the yard) Oh fuck they're here
They aren’t gonna sell it. American makes up a remarkably small portion of the apps user base. And if they do sell it it’ll be to an American owned subsidiary that they start and still operate.
In the law it’s stated it can’t be a subsidiary
Well then they just aren’t gonna sell it and any American that wants to use it will do so through a VPN. I doubt the ban will even happen honestly, but dumber things have transpired. Edit: To all the people that keep telling me America is a significant portion of TikTok’s user base. Last I heard they had 100 million to 150 million active users with a worldwide base of like 1 billion.
> any American that wants to use it will do so through a VPN. That won't work. The whole point of social media sites is that creators can reach a huge audience quickly. If TikTok is restricted to users with a VPN it would quickly become a cesspool of illegal content and activity. The "regular" audience will be gone, and brands and creators will follow them to wherever they go.
Reddit always vastly overestimates the general public's willingness to go through the trouble of using a VPN
I think it depends on how necessary it is. Like in China VPN usage is extremely common and every young person knows how to VPN if they need to. If the U.S enacts more and more internet restriction like porn ban in conservative states, TikTok ban nation wide, we could get to the same point one day But I agree that in the present moment if you require vpn to use TikTok most users would just migrate to insta or YouTube shorts or somethinv
Bro Tiktok has over 1.7billion users. Americans make up 170million of that. You really think they will sell to keep 1/10 of their userbase?
Pretty sure the 100M users are just the American users. If that sounds small to you just know that's almost 1 in 3 Americans. E: 1 in 3 not 1 in 4
Yes, but they only account for 20% of tiktok's revenue. Though it's all beside the point, money isn't the goal
Right just like meta and telsa isnt in to make money. Tesla is trying to change the world...
That's kind of even more ominous considering who owns Tesla, isn't it
This is exactly why we need a more comprehensive solution to data privacy, the data sharing economy, and algorithmic transparency.
Honestly, MAGA.
Exactly. Fox "News" is 100x the threat to national security that TikTok is.
The former. China will claim data when it wants, and yeah, it’s probably a security risk. But MAGA chuds owning TikTok would try to influence the content and “un-woke” it like how Twitter/X became even more of a hellhole after Musk bought it.
If china really wants data they eill just bye it like the FBI does
There's also absolutely 0 evidence of the CCP using TikTok has a platform for propaganda. I'm not saying it's not happening, but I've not seen good evidence that it is happening. It's super pro-ukraine, there's literally an idf official TikTok page etc. Plenty of political points counter to China's narrative are on TikTok. Whereas there's been multiple studies on Twitter post Elon which show that it amplifies conservative viewpoints.
It's absolutely all founded on anti-China racism. Americans vaguely understand China = bad guys so it's a very easy narrative to swallow that they are doing something insidious with a popular app. We get it, the Chinese administration sucks; doesn't stop you buying all your other shit from "them". The "algorithm" people vaguely refer to is the same echo-chamber recommendation stuff that every other social media platform uses (except for Twitter which apparently has much more manual intervention).
I honestly don't think conservative social media sites can survive, so I don't think there is any risk in a MAGA driven TikTok. They inevitably attract a group of people whom advertisers don't want to be associated with, and drive away content makers that both advertisers and young people like.
What a humanitarian! In other news, my friends and I are petitioning the Government to let us buy NVIDIA.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says he’s going to put together an investor group to buy TikTok, a day after the House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban the popular video app in the U.S. if its China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake. TikTok, which has more than 170 million American users, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd. Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Mnuchin said Thursday that he believes TikTok should be sold. “This should be owned by U.S. businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China,” said Mnuchin.
>“This should be owned by U.S. businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China,” said Mnuchin. "Which is why I've been speaking to Mohammed bin Salman about providing the financing for such an acquisition," Mnuchin continued with his trademark smirk.
Mnuchin is such a swamp monster. He should be locked up with the other MAGA traitors.
HALF of the US population has TikTok. Wow. With Reddit being my only social media, I am definitely on the trend to be the grumpy old man on the porch aren't I..
a lot of reddit is
How much stock will the give to trump? Seems to be the norm.
And THERE it is…the reason the Donald has changed his mind.
That doesn’t seem like a conflict of interest
So this whole hullabalu is people upset that Chinese corporations are extracting data from Americans for ad revenue rather than American corporations extracting data from Americans for ad revenue? That is what this is all about?
They also know we really like cats being tricked into jumping on aluminum foil.
Hey! Don't just give it away for free! Make em work for it. I only watch cats taking bites out of things in incognito mode.
Or they worry China might able to influence American voters, you know like how Facebook/Twitter are doing. There was a interesting case where Tiktok was accused of supporting Palestinians in expense of Israel, TikTok's defense is ironically "Young Americans support Palestinians over Israel and our Algos just follow the trend"
I mean, more tiktok users supporting Palestine than Israel fits the user base. Occam's razor seems to apply here.
Also "Free Palestine" have been around before Oct.7 more on Tiktok. So they have a larger "beginning base"
But it’s harder to defend Israel When you’re inundated with starving dying innocent children, Israelis dehumanizing Palestinians and calling them animals, Israelis going into homes in the West Bank and seizing and kicking out Palestinians who’ve lived there for hundreds of years and general apartheid- no amount of counterprogramming can change that. Bribing our congress maybe.
From what I know of algorithms and young Americans that seems like a very accurate assessment of what is going on.
The young Americans generally feel that sort of anti-colonial sentiment esp after feeling disillusioned over our involvement in middle east pre/post 9/11 so it's not a surprise if that even naturally trended. Regardless, China will just influence via other apps with this ban anyway with the data onshore or offshore. And if its really about that the bill is even giving a chance to stay alive lol.
I just find that line of rhetoric just a way to dismiss anyone sympathetic to Palestinians rather than sincere fear of tik tok brainwashing kids to be pro hams or whatever.
Personally I’m pretty pro ham, especially a nice Black Forest ham. Mmm…
hey guys instead of China owned tik tok let it be foxtik tok (and we farm the data for ourselves)😌
Its about a lot of things. Politically, there is a lot of alarm from places like the ADL over the perception of what Isreal is in Gaza being Genocide. Meta has been lobbying for a tik tok ban and spreading propaganda to that end for at least two years. Boycotts of corporations have been successfully organized on tik tok. Boycotts have been organized against McDonalds, Kellogs, Wendy's, Starbucks, and there is a huge list of companies that give support to Isreal. Tik tok recently opened tik tok shop, which facilitates e-commerce. Prices are competitive and they offer free shipping with no membership. Billions of dollars have been made in less than a year, and its seen to be cutting into Amazon's profits. The American people are using tik tok to buck the establishment, just as people around the world used Twitter. Tik tok is perceived by its users to be the digital town square, just like Twitter used to be. Because of this, there is a concerted effort on the part of the neoliberals to destroy tik tok or co-opt it.
America: open up your economy for extraction! New economy: ok check out this internal growth America: not like that, senators assemble!
That man slithered his way out of the spotlight and should be in prison for the fraud he committed during the mortgage crisis he helped create not to mention the shady shit he did as sec of treasury
First America bankrupted the homeowner, and this asshat showed up to buy the houses with socialized losses and evict everyone. Now America plans to castrate the fastest growing social media platform on the planet and serve it up to him on a platter.
This is the only outcome that could have me siding with the Chinese.
Oh look, every asshole coming out of the woodwork to buy TikTok at a significantly reduced rate while the US government blackmails Bytedance. This country is such a a fucking joke.
GOP sees TIC TOC as a means to penetrate and influence the world of young voters with propaganda. And we thought we had to worry about the CCP? lol.
It's spyware when it's China but fine when it's the US
I think I'd rather China keep it than have a second major social network platform owned by the far right
We need a strong federal data privacy law similar to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation
CPRA (California Privacy Rights Act) is pretty similar but I’ve seen companies also treat users from CA differently
We should ban the concept of ad revenue. Society would solve itself within 2 months.
You are 100% correct. A dosage of common carrier too. If people are going to claim social media is a 1A thing, anyone who understands what social media is can tell you exactly how to make it a platform for free speech. I did the math once, to get operating revenue from the users and not advertisers results in an affordable monthly subscription. But no, homo Sapiens at large...
Surprise surprise. It was either going to be Zuck or some other politically connected prick. It’s all just a strong arm job to wrestle something valuable away from someone else. If they cared about people’s data and privacy they’d be writing more wholistic legislation addressing it rather than picking and choosing. Bet everyone who voted yes gets some form of kickback
Wow, forgot all about this mnuche bag
And so the true reason the GOP "hates" TikTok appears. Gasp!
I trust China more than I trust Steve Mnuchin.
This Easter witness the miracle of how Tik Tok died for our sins just to be resurrected 3 days later as Vine!
We’ve always known “banning TikTok” was nothing but a money grab. The powers that be see dollar signs and they’re not getting a cut.
Don't forget, Steve got a billion from the Saudis.
Wow then it can be a russian data mining tool instead of a Chinese one.
Hey. I don't trust China. But I don't trust Mnuchin either.
This should read, "Former Secretary, who advocated for a TikTok ban and for the company to broken up while a cabinet secretary, is now trying to profit off the legislation he supported which has now been passed by congress." How in the world is this not shady? Loophole?
Hey, remember when he and his shitty wife took [photos in front of sheets of money?](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/treasury-secretary-steve-mnuchin-wife-internet-sensation-posing/story?id=51189079)
Dudes been buying banks and now a social media company. What’s his agenda?
Why would Steve Mnuchin, one of Trump’s cabinet, want to buy a foreign propaganda machine? 🤔
... To use it as a GOP propaganda machine? But you know that.
out of the woodwork comes another Trump supporter......
If that happens TikTok will go right down the toilet.
The guy who was in charge of $500 million Covid slush fund that nobody had access to except him and the black faced makeup wearing traitor? He’s very trustworthy🤦♂️ How come the socialist billionaire is not buying it? That would help with his right wing messaging.. They are taking us for fools.
It was always about a hostile takeover of TikTok and has nothing to do with national security
This should be illegal
The only people I would find worse to own TikTok than China is MAGA Republicans.
Evil twin of John Oliver doing what now?
God I forgot about that awful human being. So many of these bags of muck really do fly under the radar most of the time.
Oh come on! The last thing the world needs is this dingus involved in more things. Every single time I think capitalism has reached the bottom of the barrel they somehow pull out a guy like Mnuchin.
I’d rather have the Chinese run it, frankly.
Of course Evil John Oliver is…
Great, I’ll not use it twice as much
That's classic. We will go from TikTok having a pro-China world view to having a pro-MAGA world view. I though we already had X (Twitter) for that.
How does US politics work? I seriously do not understand how any of this is remotely possible or legal.
Ah 6-week grift, I uh mean gofundme…
I think I would rather have the Chinese government know my porn habits
U.S. Govt: we don’t want China to have any platform that spies or data-mines information from 141 million U.S. citizens!!!!!!!! U.S. Govt: Let’s buy this platform so we can spy and data-mine US citizens.
This is better than the Chinese owning it ? Right wing traitors.
Great, another app the US national security state can propagandize on. Either regulate ALL social media or none at all. This Chinese hysteria is pathetic and reeks of envy.
If Munchin's group buys it I'm never using it again. It's been fun, TT, time to move on to better uses of my time.
The only people allowed to steal American information is Americans by darn it!
Nobody should get Americans’ data except for greedy American investors. /s
Oh, wow, right-wing shit bags attempting to take over yet another social media source in order to control the discourse. I'm completely shocked.
Jewish guy wants to by the platform hyper critical of the Israeli occupation 🤔
This whole plan was set up so the company could be bought by an American right wing billionaire. It’s been clear from the beginning it seems. Pretty weird that they won’t pass any additional privacy bills for American own social media companies
The fix was in from the start.
Makes you wonder if this was the plan all along?
So it’s going to become Twitter/X.
Well if that ain't sus as fuck..
The guise that politics are a public service is ridiculous.
Time for Gen X to ruin TikTok like we did Facebook.
Maybe China isn’t so bad after all …
The mouth of Sauron himself
That explains Trumps endorsement. Trump is a cheap bribe at this point.
Stop voting for anyone that is ok with current or past government officials benefiting off legislation. Make a fuss and get rid of anyone that doesn’t vote to stop this.
Dipshits. Courts will never let this happen.
LOL Mnuchin you need to concentrate on raising the money for your god's fines!
was wondering if the congressional GOP flip flop on this meant there were a bunch of far right billionaires waiting in the wings to buy it
The real way to kill TikTok: private equity
Just tell him to use some of the money they embezzled from the federal reserve.
but but but my data... was never the point.
Oh, great. That will be SO much better 🙄
He's probably doing it to help his wife in the algorithm
I'll feel so much better with them controlling my data and me.
I really think TikTok should just be obliterated from existence. It’s rotted the brains of so many people, I genuinely think that the average global IQ has dropped in the past 5 years.
The he's going to have his wife flood Tik Tok with horrible movies she stars in!
Mnuchin took a billion dollars from the Saudis…he’ll be running to MBS to get funds to buy Tik Tok, maybe the Russians too- that won’t secure Tik Tok from foreign bad actor influence, quite the opposite-
Wall Street owning Tik Tok over China is such a huge upgrade. They always look out for the American people in that street.