Key details:
1. New, US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users.
2. 80% owned by a U.S. investor consortium led by Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz, 20% by Bytedance.
3. Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director.
4. All U.S. user data would sit on Oracle infrastructure in the US.
5. Algorithm will be initially licensed, but has to be reengineered to comply with the law.
Not discussed - whether the US tiktok app is allowed to compete with TikTok outside of the US. My guess is NO.
This seems like the microwaved corpse of the original 2020 deal. Bytedance keeps all the IP, sells Oracle the nearly worthless right to operate the US infra. They can't even call their franken-app Tiktok. The US user data already sits in the US but they'll expect everyone to forget about that so they can brag about this token win.
They'll probably get what they really want, which is an admin console for the algorithm that has a 'political slant' slider that they can slide as far to the reich as they wish.
Is the US data accessible to non-US entities? The point right now, as I understood it, is to cut off PRC access to the data completely.
Before: we’re spying on you, but here’s a copy!
After: we’ve moved the spy machine to Ashburn VA, here are the keys.
The point was to control the algo to prevent stuff like Palestine showing up.
Wait the US version can’t even be called TikTok?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out though. People follow the money. Investors wouldn't be interested if they didn't see the value. If the new app can snag the network effects, then it will win. What is TikTok worth without the US audience?
The buyers are so absurdly wealthy that it’s not really wealth anymore, it’s power. They’re simply trading some of their dragon hoard of power for some other form of it. These people are above pedestrian worries about ROI.
> People follow the money. Investors wouldn't be interested if they didn't see the value.
The value may well be in currying favor with the Trump regime, not in the actual deal for itself. If you can lose a few billion on becoming best friends with an increasingly authoritarian leadership, you may well get much more power and future opportunities from that.
This. Ellison is a Trump+power fanboi. Through a few billion at a project to get multiples in return in other projects.
It might be zionism rather than 'fanboiing' over Trump that motivates him. It seems one has to curry favours with Trump to keep him tolerant of Netanyahu and unconditionally supporting of the state of Israel, and this would likely have such an effect.
Recently the Ellison clan dumped a large amount of money on the infamous genocidaire Bari Weiss and is pushing CBS to accept her as a senior member of their news organisation.
Can someone explain to me why the rich and powerful care about Israel so much? I really don't get it.
There are probably a lot of reasons I haven't encountered.
Among the common ones I have are things like Palestine being like a lawless laboratory where industrialists are trying out new gadgets and systems on human populations, which is an important driver in civil as well as military state power towards both their own populations and foreign.
It's also one of the last surviving colonial projects and some old money dynasties stick by it for nostalgic or geopolitical reasons. Related to this is a common form of racism, where the state of Israel is perceived as a civilised western bulwark against the unshaven barbaric hordes of the east.
Then there are religious convictions, especially common among usians, who are often of the belief that there is a God that has a plan for the cosmos that involves first telling the jews about ethics and then replacing them with christians but keeping the jews around as the first line of defense in the ultimate war to end all wars and history itself. Usually this is expressed as a philosemitic form of antisemitism where they see themselves as kind of stewards of the jewish diaspora communities and take on themselves the purpose of moving all jews close to Jerusalem, where this final war is supposed to begin. It's not uncommon that these people perceive arab and persian muslims as basically an Antichrist entity that needs to be eradicated, either in the short term if they're uppity or kept in some form of economic or political bondage.
While there's a lot of conspiracist beliefs surrounding it I'm also convinced there is some truth to the view that israeli security services keeps a lot of kompromat and similar tools of power involving rich and powerful people. Open assassinations and the like have backfired sometimes, e.g. the Lillehammer scandal, and I suspect that this has pushed israeli security to try to adapt to more shadowy tactics.
And then you have people with Holocaust or related forms of shallowly antiracist anxieties, that have convinced themselves that the jews deserve Palestine due to historic attempts at extermination. This is somewhat related to christian zionist beliefs where jews are considered somehow special, 'a chosen people', which is why they are supposedly deserving of an atrocity-laden settler colonial project but e.g. the cirkassians are not and they don't care about the christians of Artsakh and so on.
Plus the economic opportunities due to huge free-money investments into corporations situated in Israel and more mundane imperial considerations like the geopolitical positioning as a destabilising force between Eurasia and Africa as well as on the edge of Eurasia itself. The Mediterranean is small but imagine if there was high-speed rail and a decent degree of social and economic integration all the way from South Africa and Mauritania up to Europe, that would make this a hugely important economic and political area and North America would look puny and useless beside it, due to being surrounded by oceans and so on. Israel also happens to be a base for nuclear weapons placed really close to some of the largest energy reserves on the planet, and largely dependent on states really far away that in turn are highly dependent on the exploitation of these energy reserves.
Also, some people are plain sadists. They feel pleasure and giddiness when they know there are other people on what they perceive as their team doing the worst of things, just the nastiest possible stuff, the most excruciating forms of hierarchy and power imbalance. Sometimes because that makes the power imbalances that keep them in place look relatively sane and tolerable.
Reich? You need to check the background of those involved in the deal.
Ah yes, famed billionaire Larry Ellison, 98% owner of the Hawaiian Island of Lānaʻi, who you famously should not anthropomorphisize [1][2] who has proposed using AI on mass surveillance cameras so that ‘citizens will be on their best behavior’[3] is definitely not into authoritarian government. He's totally not known as being an authoritarian CEO, with financhill describing his reign as CEO: > Of these four leadership styles, Larry Ellison’s style is decidedly autocratic. [4]. He may be a Jew, and the holocaust may be the worst thing the Nazis did, but it wasn't the only bad thing about their reign.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s [3] https://fortune.com/2024/09/17/oracle-larry-ellison-surveill... [4] https://financhill.com/blog/investing/larry-ellison-leadersh...
I had a good laugh at some of your links. There have been many bad regimes but we only hear about the nazis because the owners of the media like to keep it a hot topic as it benefits them politically. What do you think will happen with Tiktok 2.0?
In the wake of Luigi Mangioni, and Reddit deleting his supporters' threada, it seems the US has learned from the CCP on how to quell resistance. People need to be able to let off steam, but they can't be allowed to organize. TikTok 2.0, as a mouthpiece for the GOP, is mysteriously going to have supporting videos surfaced and takedowns will fail to go viral. Mysteriously. Or course, I look like a lunatic for suggesting that, as I have no proof, but those videos taking down the luxury fashion brands on TikTok didn't get there organically.
Looking at the performance of Facebook in the wake of Cambridge Analytica, and Twitter post purchase, or Reddit post blackout, platforms have a too big to fail quality to them. Even slashdot still gets a pile of comments every day. Yahoo and Myspace are still around. TikTok will never die. The next generation may find a new platform to be on (hopefully obe with the feature of going to the next video automatically) due to fuckery by the GOP, but it might be Truth Social but for videos. ORCL already popped, so it's no good getting in there now, but other than that, however TikTok 2.0 does doesn't really actually affect my life. I'll just end up on whichever app there's better content.
I agree. I'd be surprised if social media was not censored or directed by all actors that can get their hands on it. Media isn't really bought to make profits. It's for control. With the EU and UK pushing for internet licences it's very obvious now that the elites have no interest in an open internet.
This shit is crazy that it’s really happening. The double whammy is that the youth is not prepared intellectually and will continue contributing their data to this platform.
Some will. There’s a good chance any modification to the algorithm will make it less sticky and the youth will migrate to another app.
It’s part of a larger trend of the buying platforms for obvious propaganda. It seems to be a successful strategy.
Youth will be on whichever app the creators are on. As long as they can hold the status quo keeping creators on the app the people that will leave will be few.
Adults are pretty stupid, too, especially legislators who voted to ban TikTok.
So Bytedance can still access user data going forward?
Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director.
Why?
The nominal reason for all this is that we didn't want a Chinese company controlling an important social media outlet. I don't love that reasoning, but fine, whatever.
So they're forcibly selling it to an American company. Which should solve the problem, right?
Are we going to be putting government-appointed directors on all social media companies? Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese?
Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it?
Seems obvious to me that this is so the government can force the platform to silence users who are critical of the government.
You're right, it seems obvious. Considering the number of self-professed "free speech absolutists" I have encountered on this site over the years, I'm surprised at how much benefit of the doubt others are giving this.
I'm not. The last few years have made it very clear what the actual political goals of the VC-tech world are. I was as disappointed as anybody, but I'm not surprised anymore.
I was trying to be more neutral, but after some thought, this isn't the time for that. My "surprise" was more than a bit sarcastic. Between this and the FCC going after Kimmel, now is the last chance I will give for anyone claiming to care about free speech to prove they weren't lying. There's no plausible deniability anymore, free speech is unambiguously under attack.
What’s even more hilarious are all the anti cancel culture warriors from the past few years going on about how the Kimmel situation isn’t cancel culture.
Especially since this is probably the only incident in the last couple of decades where the cancelation was a result of the government threatening consequences unless a specific individual was not canceled.
Cancel culture has been firmly adopted by all political sides now. It is simply too powerful and effective a weapon to be not used.
It is a pretty big difference when the left wing cancel culture is a grassroots efforts of the populace trying to enforce moral behavior versus the right wing cancel culture we are seeing today in which the government is the one exerting pressure and not the populace.
Yup. It always comes back to "both sides are bad, so vote Republican".
Dril said it best.
https://x.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en
I'm glad you finally agree free speech under attack. Now that the president/party in power has changed, it seems the comments have shifted from being that "I must be left wing" to "I must be right wing".
Is there anything that will make you interested in free speech itself, or is it just an attack towards those you disagree with? People don't want to waste time in an internet debate with someone who starts off with an assumption of the latter, and you've already concluded you were being sarcastic in asking. The lack of interest in responding to you about it will only help drive your belief "the other people" are the only ones who claim to care about free speech.
That is because the complaints about left wing threats to free speech are always incredibly dubious like the government asking social media sites to take down what was widely considered dangerous Covid misinformation or some random college professor saying people should use "Latinx". In comparison, the right wing attacks on free speech are like the FCC threatening people for mild jokes. Can you name anything the left wing has done that approaches what we just saw with Kimmel?
The Biden administration started this whole TikTok thing in the first place, you just liked the platform at the time and are now getting bit in the ass when the group in power has changed. I'm not interested in which side is supposed to be worse than the other so someone can feel better about the speech they are okay with suppressing, I'm interested in free speech all the time.
The Kimmel thing is indeed a stupid and dangerous attack on free speech, but you can't just wait until the speech under attack is about something you care for to declare that. It's already too late at that point, which is what many of the people you eagerly dismiss as just caring about right wing politics were trying to say.
> Biden started this whole TikTok thing in the first place
No, Trump started it in his first term, Biden just continued it, as did Trump continue what he started.
I stand corrected on the claim I made, merging https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292731
> The Biden administration started this whole TikTok thing in the first place
No, it didn't.
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...
I stand corrected on the claim I made, merging https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292731
Others have addressed "this whole TikTok thing" being attributed to Biden. I asked you for a left wing equivalent for Kimmel and you couldn't name one. Somehow this lack of an equivalent left wing attack is evidence of them sharing responsibility for this right wing attack on free speech. That is a perfect illustration of my point. I'm not going to "waste time in an internet debate with someone" who can't see the silliness of the argument you just made.
Fair on "starting", I should have said "was perfectly in support of and did not attempt to stop" https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-administration-leave-t... and I'm willing to see it was silly to forget the specifics by claiming a different sequence to the topic - hopefully you are also willing to make the same kinds of considerations instead of only using such questions as assumptions of other people.
There is no lack of "equivalent left wing attack", just shifts on when it's okay to do based on how much the individual agrees with it. I've had this exact conversation with right wing folks but the other way around (where nothing conservative was unreasonable suppression but plenty left wing was unreasonable suppression). Because you agree with the views of whatever the Biden admin supported e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_Governance_Boar... then you don't consider it a problem (and yes, the Biden administration likes to claim it was just building on something the Trump administration had started... which gets us nowhere in actually doing something positive for free speech instead of using it as a blame game). Because someone else agrees with Trump/Kirk they don't consider it a problem. As a result, there is nothing I can say that will make anyone agree when things are equivalent. The difference is not that I agree with a different agenda, nor do I need to find equivalence, it's that I'm not interested in weighing the speech itself.
I, obviously, don't like Russian misinformation (or human smugglers or whatever thing is obviously malintended), but I don't think trying to have a government body decide what is misinformation is a good way to solve the concerns. That's what a free speech absolutist is after all, not just a way to say only a certain party did something bad. I could go on and on about specific instances, but all that does is rile people up about "why would you put that in a list of bad things" or "that's obviously not as big a deal to worry about" whenever they see something they tend to agree with. Those not in support of free speech have no problem saying other transgressions on free speech are a bigger deal, just in agreeing what "other" is.
Supporting free speech is not about agreeing with the speech, it's about tackling any perceived bad speech with open means instead of power. I don't agree with either the Biden or Trump administrations on the ways either seek to suppress social media, regardless if you think some are justified and others aren't. You think it's okay to suppress things as long as they seem harmless or small to you, I don't. That's the only fair assumption of what a free speech absolutist is.
I will give credit that at least my original comment isn't already flagged dead for saying I'm really about free speech instead of the opposition, which has been the typical result the previous 4 years.
In addition to what people already said, Biden isn't left-wing.
I'd tend to agree (I voted Jill Stein) but in context of U.S. politics he's usually considered as such (at least as center left, not center right or even center), albeit less so than some other figures.
On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being left and 10 being right, Biden's about a 6, and Trump is like 10.
I'd also agree Trump is more conservative than Biden is liberal, but I think we're getting a bit into the weeds here...
The point with Biden and Trump is whenever free speech is mentioned, people conclude the part of a political spectrum they identify with is being attacked by someone they perceive as being on a different part, with no belief there could ever be a person actually worried about free speech itself. It's not at all about whether I agree or disagree with where they perceive that threat to be from on the spectrum, it's just what such people like to claim. I've yet to see a normal political spectrum where 100% of folks agree with free speech absolutism, even when inconvenient.
To folks who actually care about free speech instead of partisan politics, the idea of debating where on a scale of 1 to 10 the source of the threat might be from is in itself absurdly irrelevant. To folks that don't care about free speech, it's convenient to perceive free speech claims as only ever having a hidden partisan agenda instead of allowing the possibility of a free speech absolutist. The only exception I can think to any of this is a political spectrum where one side is "free speech absolutism" itself.
The thing is, self-professed "free speech absolutists" generally believe that only right with and nazi speech are the ones worthy of defense. Anybody else who is criticizing those, disagreeing with those or promoting other ideas is seen as threat to free speech.
Self-professed "free speech absolutists" get really angry when left or anti right people speak or make the right uncomfortable.
No, this is just in your head. You might still have 40-year-old instincts from when the authoritarian right was in charge, both in institutions and in social norms, but it's been the authoritarian left for 20 years. Any discussion that engages in spreading stereotypes, rather than debating ideas, is just part of the problem.
It is authoritarian right right now destroying democracy in full speed.
And it was like that all along, just a bit more hidden so that moderate right can pretend it is not happening all along.
"Authoritarian left" We're cooked
Historically this is definitely what's killed the most people, but who knows - maybe this time it'll be different.
What sources of information are you getting that you think the people in charge now are not 'authoritarian right' ?
You're not making sense. People on the right actively spread stereotypes, racist cliches, and other antisocial, pro-violent opinions that they call the truth and won't budge on their opinion, but as soon as a leftist calls someone with actual authoritarian viewpoints a nazi they are the problem for spreading stereotypes and not debating ideas? lmfao
> but as soon as a leftist calls someone with actual authoritarian viewpoints a nazi
The left en masse has been doing this for 10 years, and for far less that "authoritarian viewpoints".
Not surprised this is your only argument to my post. It was an easy, yet flawed example on my part.
People say all sorts of stuff, but if your consistently being told by a large cohort of individuals your shit stinks for a decade, it probably stinks.
Particularly the Israeli government.
Honestly curious how much of this is about stopping people from knowing what Israel (and the US by extension) are doing.
Just in time for them to “finish the job”
EDIT: Found this: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/tiktok-ban-fueled-by-israe...
That, and boosting the influencers they want to be heard.
>Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it?
Well, yes, for starters. I think there's a pretty strong consensus from people on all sides that there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one.
It's the beneficiary of powerful network effects, it created those effects for itself with a superior app, but nevertheless it is a distinguishing feature. I also would say it's culturally positioned perhaps the best of any major social media app over the present and near term.
And in its current ownership it's required by statute to comply with Chinese national security data requests. And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
>> Are we going to be putting [US] government-appointed directors on all [US] social media companies?
> And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
Agreed.
Great so let’s ban it then and avoid that problem? If you’re upset about the US government having a board seat on the US-specific app then you are even more mad that the CCP does while you munch on Tide pods and get outraged about whatever the algorithm tells you.
Or you can just get rid of this crap and stop lying to yourself about the value and they can rule over an empty kingdom.
Otherwise yes indeed the US will get a board seat and the Trump admin will make content demands and you will take it like a coward because you’re too addicted to give it up.
(Just a note I don’t mean you specifically - I don’t know if you’re addicted to social media or not)
> there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one.
I really have to disagree at this point. Meta has all the money in the world to throw at this, and inference isn't rocket surgery. I think Meta's algorithm caught up a couple years ago, if anything it's even more addictive. Tiktok is simply riding on first mover status, plus it's a Coke/Pepsi thing, a large segment finds Meta properties distasteful for all the obvious reasons.
I agree (not OP). The difference in addictiveness between the three big boys (Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) grows smaller with every passing year as their back-catalog of content grows.
Pretty much everyone I know consumes TikTok style content these days. I personally have blocked myself from this stuff via deleting the Insta, YouTube and I even wrote a TamperMonkey script to block myself from getting trapped down the rabbit hole.
Self shout out: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/534969-begone-youtube-shor...
I think it's more the product design is far more distilled for popular (and addictive) short term content. From ad placement to UI to the format of solely being a frictionless video platform with mostly anonymous users.
> And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
At the rate the US is going this will be interesting for Europe and Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc, in probably the near future.
I think its pretty obvious how and why, every other platform copied the key parts of Tik tok, youtube has shorts, and others have their own rendition. What they all miss is that this IS Tik Tok its not some additional part of Tik Tok. It's a simple UI that gives you endless content you like, they tag all the content in a meaningful way behind the scenes, and then the recommendation engine works to feed you more of what you like.
Pinterest but for short videos.
Turns out short attention bursts is enough for the younger generations, they get condensed news. The big downside I see is they get used to the cut version of things, I am a huge fan of longer videos with raw uncut context, I tire of people telling me what someone said, just give me the video thanks, I can think for myself.
> but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
I think political scholars will debate on what the net effect of this is actually going to be. As in, are we better off with the GOP or the CCP controlling the algorithm? Certainly, the CCP has anti west incentives that the GOP does not, like trying to confuse us as to how we should feel about protecting Taiwan.
But in the past, the CCP has been interested in sewing discontent in the US and the method by which they have done that is by propping up the GOP. And many ways by which both the CCP and GOP would presumably manipulate the algorithm would be similar—owning libs, promoting radical right wing views, etc. But having the GOP control TikTok is a different thing entirely, they are much more incentivized to propagate their own flavor of politics to skew the nations narrative to their liking, in a much more controlled way than I think the CCP would. See twitter for prior art here.
At least if TikTok is owned in the US there might be some oversight into what’s going on. As bankrupt as Mark is as a person it doesn’t seem like hes pushing his own political views into instagrams algorithm, unlike the case at twitter. I think we have yet to see how Ellison will treat the great power of controlling the TikTok algorithm but I’m cynical.
> CCP has anti west incentives that the GOP does not
The GOP wants to destroy the west even more than the CCP, yes.
Having control of "The Algorithm" is putting it vaguely. The two things are making sure everyone sees a certain video, like how China did with the factory videos taking down luxury brands. The other is filtering out things entirely, eg Epstein or Luigi Mangione. The worst is that they'll learn from the CCP, which is to let people air their frustrations, just don't let them get organized.
It's an interesting question, but the information we have so far doesn't seem to be enough to give a meaningful answer yet. E.g. is it something like "one person appointed to oversee the full terms of the transition are kept" or "one person appointed always to make sure TikTok aligns with the government".
I'm not necessarily a fan of either... but to vastly different levels.
Because Trump wants a proxy so he can continue to influence the direction TikTok takes. He wants easier access to data so he can go after his political opponents, as well as get things censored he doesn't like. Of course, this would all be possible without someone on the board, but it can't hurt, and likely will help.
If TikTok removes something, would the fact that there’s a government representative on the board give standing for a first amendment claim? Normally private companies aren’t required to furnish you with first amendment rights, but if one could argue that, if not for the board representative, they might not have prevented that speech, then perhaps you would have standing.
Yeah, the supreme court will get right on that
As soon as the appointee is appointed by a Democratic politician, at least.
That won't help. The count is currently 6 Republicans to 3 Democrats. The party isn't an absolute predictor of how they'll vote, but it's pretty close.
It would take a minimum of two Republicans to retire, and be replaced by Democrats, to change the partisan balance. The oldest justice is Clarence Thomas, but the next two are both Democrats. Everybody else is under 70 and will not retire for a minimum of a decade.
I'm talking about the appointee to the board of the US-TikTok; I doubt the Supreme Court will have any objection until it is favorable for their partisan politics. (I hope I am wrong, but the past years have made me quite cynical)
When has this government give a single care about free speech or the constitution or even the law in general?
Pushing trad wife and Christ is king content to young people is worth it. Propaganda works.
They don’t want you scrolling through insert_controversial_topic at break neck pace. The bandwidth on TikTok in terms of getting a visual out is extremely wide and fast.
You know the answer lol
That is a seat reserved for AIPAC.
Remember though, it's only bad when the other guy does it. We don't want Chinese government involvement in TikTok, but we do want US government involvement. /s
The "Be all you can be" slogan requires more than just a great firewall that China should pay for, it needs a constant vigil to protect it from German nihilists.
Build a [fire]wall and make China pay for it is an amusing — if bleak — joke. Thank you :)
What do you mean though by protection from “German nihilists”? Is that a satirical name you imagine the US government might use for the EU?
The timing of the slogan change is not really ideal for blaming German nihilists but it's all a while ago around when the big Lebowski surfaced that very serious threat..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWIII_(album)
Perhaps a sideways reference to old movies? “Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.”[0]
Or maybe just a direct reference to Strauss, I dunno.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464759&r...
I mean I do want the world's most influential social media app to be within the jurisdiction of a non-authoritarian state, yes.
So... we're transferring it to one who requires a government representative on its board?
Harm reduction accomplished! Sounds like we agree on the underlying principle.
"non-authoritarian" state said completely unironically.
It's the difference between a house that's on fire, and a house that's been fully burned to the ground and replaced with a maximum security prison. If you can't distinguish between those, I don't think your grasp on objective reality is strong enough for you to be qualified to participate in the conversation.
So then you agree that putting our current government even partially in charge of the new company would be a bad idea?
I agree that it is harm reduction relative to the status quo.
i want the worlds most influential social media app to be away from the jurisdiction of any powerful people/organization, whether that’s governments, religions, billionaires, etc…
i find it worrisome that some are implying it’s new controllers are somehow less of a threat.
The USA is also an authoritarian State, it just has better marketing.
I live in Taiwan. I'm no fan of the CPC. But if you zoom out a bit, it's kinda hard to distinguish the two beyond Americans winning global cultural victory (CPC propaganda is still goofy and obvious).
Point at tiananmem square, an atrocious massacre of their own citizenry. The USA has done this - it has locked its citizens in concentration camps, supported their enslavement and recaptured the ones that managed to free themselves, bombed wealthy neighborhoods of the wrong race, had soldiers fire upon striking workers and peaceful protesters. America just has no Tank Man photo and much more subtle media relations - ostensibly free media but in reality controlled through the mutual interests of the billionaire owners of the media conglomerates and the multi millionaire politicians.
The CPC did a genocide in Xinjiang. They were very good at information control here, it's almost impossible to find even an image from the inside of one of their concentration camps. The USA funded a genocide in Palestine, but it can maintain a sort of non culpability. At any point in time the USA can turn on its Israeli allies, and my cynical expectation is that when the government becomes flagrantly fascist enough they'll just blame the Jews and call it done. But, until now, they've maintained an extraordinarily effective marketing campaign propping up Israel as a bastion of freedom and democracy in a demonic environment,values it's managed to market across the entire world that isn't the PRC or cuba or Venezuela, to where people in other countries will say "I can do what I want, it's a free country" even in countries where that really isn't the case e.g. for speech in the UK for example. In actuality it's a more racialized pitch - the Israelis are more credibly white, the Muslims are, well, Muslims. Or Brown. Whichever. But they have this massive marketing apparatus (decades of film and TV) smoothing over these racialized concepts into "freedom and democracy vs savagery and chaos," whereas the CPC with their racialized version just had Han and Normal vs Muslim and Kinda Weird (maybe dangerous!). A much more despicable pitch on the surface which is why they didn't get away with a televised genocide the way America and Israel got away with decades of apartheid against Palestine.
Anyway in summary if we take a look at all the bad the CPC vs the USA have done in their lifetimes, idk man at best the scales at balanced, worse case I think America has been worse for the world overall. I would be curious if people that disagree would be willing to do so with the context of American imperialism in mind - interfering in south America and the middle East for example. Is it still better than a country that has one imperialist action (Tibet) and a genocide under its belt?
I'll start by recommending you look up whataboutism, and learn about why it's a fallacious form of argumentation. There's definitely a non-fallacious way of making your argument, but that's your job.
I also don't think your assessment of the relative histories is reliable, but for our purposes here, that's all largely beside the point, because the degree of national security alignment of domestic companies in China compared to the United States are at completely different orders of magnitude, which is the pertinent issue when considering harm reduction here.
When did the concept of "a free country" arise, and what did it mean? It seems to have been in use in the 1600s. Here it is in a tract written, apparently, around 1689 in England:
https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-tract-su...
The freedoms in that instance are freedom of religion, and democracy. (Democracy, the franchise, was limited to about 10% of men, under rules that varied locally from "you have to own a house" to "you have to own the entire region".)
But here the concept is again in ancient times:
https://archive.org/details/BiblicalCollectionPrintedBetween...
This is (a translation of) Josephus, writing in the first century about a speech by a Roman senator from the time when Claudius was put on the throne, with lines like "our natural freedom", "breath of liberty", and "the Liberty of former Times, that was dead and gone before ever I came into the World ..." I can't work out what that freedom was all about - Claudius came after Caligula, though, so you can make a good guess - but evidently this kind of concept is much older than the United States.
I also found the phrase "it's a free country" in Uncle Tom's Cabin, where the freedom in question is the freedom to control slaves.
So the concept is:
• Not modern,
• Not well defined,
• But not meaningless, either.
My meaning is more like, St. Nicholas and his flying sleigh and reindeer have existed since at least the 1800s, Father Christmas as well, Sinterklaas even earlier most likely, but Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus as the world knows him in 1930s, and the USA did the same for the modern concept of "free country" or "democracy." A couple decades of radio, television, and film dominance was the method.
Running with that metaphor, Sinterklaas (freedom and democracy) actually exists, and even when people invoke the Coca-Cola version they're still aspiring to something with a grain of truth to it. It doesn't merely simplify to "us and them" but also contains some actual meaning relating to actual forms of freedom, when people take the trouble to add the depth back in instead of lazily designating outsiders.
I guess the US have a kind of Tank Man photo. The girl from Vietnam.
About media. For me, since Trump second term, I just can't watch Superhero movies (DC / Marvel). It just feels strange and wrong for me. Also movies like the Den of Thieves (1), the feel just plain wrong with a brutal police.
This is your annual reminder that white Muslims do in fact exist.
This is a gentle reminder that it really doesn't matter what the color of a Muslim's skin is to those who care to distinguish someone as Muslim or not-Muslim. To the racist right wing machine, those that are undeniably white (say, a blond haired blue eyed nord), will be called "Muslim" or "Jew" or "Antifa" or "queer" or "trans" and that'll be that, their whiteness is revoked.
Whiteness, like any race, is a purely cultural concept rooted in the shifting reality of day to day sociology.
A man with as-of-yet undefined politics was identified as the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk. Before he was found, a governor said, "I really hope he's not one of us." When it was discovered that he was a young white male from a Mormon MAGA family, the media machine that had been calling for the elimination of the opposition party in the USA (or various minorities such as LGBT people) went silent for about a day until it was discovered that perhaps the assassin's roommate may have been trans. Immediately he was othered. Calls for prayer for a lost young man turned again into calls for violence against trans people. I imagine Governor Cox breathing a sigh of relief. Whiteness revoked!
> Are we going to be putting government-appointed directors on all social media companies?
That wouldn't be a bad thing. How good has unchecked Zuckerberg been for us, really?
> Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese?
Or the one where there's some level to force on them, like here. If Zuckerberg starts needing government cash to keep Facebook going, I'd expect a similar deal.
>That wouldn't be a bad thing
The government should be the government, and corporations should be corporations. Nothing good will come of having them bleed together.
Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both.
> Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both.
No, not for the good of both - for the good of the people. It is demonstrably beneficial for those in power in government and megacorps to conspire and consolidate that power, it enables them to further control and extract from the populace. It is the people that should be invested in keeping them separate.
> The government should be the government, and corporations should be corporations. Nothing good will come of having them bleed together.
> Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both.
I'm not convinced of that anymore. The problem is the government is so weak and slow: the corporations can implement some bad decision before the government has a chance to notice and regulate.
There needs to be more stakeholders with power at the corporate decision-making table than just the shareholders and their representatives. You need workers there, you needs someone to speak for the interests of the country as a whole, etc.
Unchecked Zuckerberg is still preferable to anyone appointed by the current admin.
> Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director.
In other words, one's data will now be under the scrutiny of amoral radicals who have decided to target people for political speech.
We are slowly becoming Communist China.
Won't be long until all companies will be required to have a party office.
This is such a funny take. In China corporations operate at the behest of the government. In the US the government operates at the behest of corporations.
That's changing, though. They <are> working together, but the balance is tilting towards the US government and worse, towards individuals controlling it.
The U.S. is moving to state capitalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism) which is common in fascist regimes (think Nazi Germany or fascist Italy)
Which should also be deemed very inefficient, if I understand correctly. Germany's growth was unsustainable. A realistic example would be Spain, where 36 years of real-world fascism left the country well behind comparable countries.
All that means is an interchange of definitions: Chinese calls "corporations" what US calls "government" and vice versa. But not fundamental different reality.
On planet Floorp, carpets (organic bipedal tetrapods) use people (machines that suck air) to clean vacuums (woolen floor lining). How quaint - no, not really, that's exactly the same as on Earth but with different words.
There are good arguments to be made that the USA's government is corporations, and the entity we call "the US government" doesn't actually meet the definition of being the government of the US.
Its a nice thought, but this is not at all reflective of reality
That's not true. You won't have state care or education
maybe, but i think what I see here is trump is not interested to beat china, just see what he did with s korea and india.
the only thing may indicate that trump is competing with china is how hard he's trying to please putin, but apparently he needs to work harder to get into the organ harvesting club.
US bought a big stake in Intel; the US is quickly attempting to replicate China's system of State Capitalism. If you can't beat em, join em, I guess.
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Weren't they just reporting to Twitter when they saw posts breaker twitters existing policies?
Is it not problematic that the government is bringing up specific things they’d like censored?
As long as it stays to the level of "Hey, doesn't this violate your rules?" I think the government has the same right to press the report button, or even to write an email equivalent to pressing report a bunch of times, as anyone else does.
I'm not aware that a Democrat government arrested anyone for not complying with these emails.
Are you suggesting it's okay for the government to push for censoring specific content only when it also happens to break the rules of a site?
How is the flag button equivalent to the White House writing emails to Twitter and Meta? It seems the latter would have a lot more priority than my personal measly attempts at pressing the flag button on something I didn't like
Yeah it certainly looked bad. And it gave cover for the new administration to just pretend the first amendment doesn't exist.
I'm just as entitled as Joe Biden to write an email to Elon saying he should ban the following rule-breaking posts.
I've written emails to HN moderators like that before.
Key word here is "asking".
Yes the government asking for content to be censored is censorship. They don’t always ask either, e.g. Julian Assange/Wikileaks
> All U.S. user data would sit on Oracle infrastructure in the US.
Legally required to use the services of a specific company, that's a sweet deal right there.
As part of Project Texas[1], they've already been using Oracle's infrastructure.
> The central feature of Project Texas is our work with Oracle to isolate the TikTok services serving U.S. users within Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment as an additional safeguard. Although gateways to the storage infrastructure are strictly monitored and controlled, U.S. users of the TikTok platform can still communicate and interact with global users for a cohesive global experience.
[1]https://usds.tiktok.com/usds-about
TikTok has been on Oracle cloud for years. One of its biggest customers.
I suspect the legal requirement is for it to be in the US, the Oracle part is probably just because they're the ones investing.
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That’s very interesting, I wonder if the toxicity of the American culture wars can be contained this way.
Also, I see creators, trying to create US based TikTok accounts because they believe that this way their content will be shown to Americans, which are better monetized. If that’s the case, I wonder if international creator will move to the American TikTok for the better payout.
It the international creators stay with the international TikTok IMHO that will be a huge win for China, practically displacing American culture for the younger demographic in the rest of the world.
>I wonder if the toxicity of the American culture wars can be contained this way.
Look at recent events: American government officials want to maintain the same level of toxic culture wars that foreign governments want. They just want to control them, not contain them.
>> I wonder if international creator will move to the American TikTok for the better payout.
If I were China I would do this deal and then ensure that the payout is better outside the US. Try to sway US content creators to use VPN's and post outside the US and essentially limit the impact of the deal.
Giving power to the radicals that want division wouldn't have that effect, and it's bizarre to even suggest that it would.
> I wonder if the toxicity of the American culture wars can be contained this way.
Huh? Are you not aware of US social media companies?
Everything that's happening on TikTok is also happening on X, Facebook, Friendster, or whatever the kids are using these days. The only difference is that the TikTok algorithm promotes Chinese propaganda and ideology, and enriches the Chinese government and ByteDance. The US can't have that, hence this deal.
This won't affect the American downward spiral a single iota. That would require strong regulation of social media companies and adtech in general, and there would be a nationwide revolt if that were even proposed. This is far from being considered anyway, now that Big Tech is deeply entrenched in the government.
>This won't affect the American downward spiral a single iota.
Broadly speaking, I think you're probably right that the dynamics on tiktok already exist elsewhere in social media. But I do think a practical upshot of it could be a version of Tiktok where you can criticize the Hong Kong takeover or Xinxianj labor camps or harassment of expatriate dissidents or Taiwan indepence openly and not have it soft-deplatformed. Which could cause stronger domestic consciousness of those issues, and stronger solidarity with Europe and the rest of the Western world.
Oh great now Americans get to talk about things the US government could care less about while at the same time losing the ability to criticize Israel or the current administration. Does not sound like a great win. There were plenty of platforms to talk about those topics already. What didn't exist was a platform that expressly talked about things the US does not like. It could be argued that the rise in pro-palestine awareness post Oct 7 is in part to TikTok. Thats likely going away now so Americans on the whole are left worse off.
> losing the ability to criticize Israel or the current administration
When did Americans lose that ability? I didn't hear about this happening.
> could be argued that the rise in pro-palestine awareness post Oct 7 is in part to TikTok. Thats likely going away now so Americans on the whole are left worse off.
The only thing that changed is that China can't choose what you get shown, do you think that the pro-palestine videos are only there due to Chinese influence?
> When did Americans lose that ability? I didn't hear about this happening.
You haven't heard about the government pressuring universities to prevent students protesting Israel? Or about anti-BDS laws?
>When did Americans lose that ability? I didn't hear about this happening.
It fell in between the razer thin "terms & conditions" of most American service providers and the the main point of this thread: controlling the algorithm to suppress these thoughts. I will concede that Americans can still set up their own online service and yell into an empty room.
>The only thing that changed is that China can't choose what you get shown, do you think that the pro-palestine videos are only there due to Chinese influence?
anything that China does not find offensive is there.
Not being able to openly criticize the US or any other government on social media is hardly important. Free speech never existed on privately run platforms to begin with. It's delusional to think that it does or to demand it, when all users must abide with specific terms and conditions. The only people who think that are those whose views happen to align with the views of companies that run the platform. The moment that changes, as we've seen from the Twitter takeover, the previous user base will denounce censorship and deplatforming, while a new user base will celebrate "free speech". It's all a circus of ignorance and disinformation.
The main problem is that allowing foreign propaganda from a political rival to influence your citizens, while giving them free reign to exploit user data, is undeniably a matter of national security. The issue is that taking over a single platform doesn't stop foreign influence and data mining, which is also happening on all other platforms, courtesy of the adtech machinery that powers all of them. We have concrete evidence of this from the Cambridge Analytica leak, which was just the tip of the iceberg of a multi-billion dollar industry.
So unless US companies are willing to take a severe hit on their revenue and drastically change their business models, which can only happen with regulation that in practice will never be enacted, none of this will change.
If you're a user of these platforms, stop worrying about what you can or cannot say, and start worrying about what you're being manipulated to think, say, and do.
Just fwiw, Threads is basically the go-to for Taiwan stuff. It's absurdly popular in Taiwan and people recently used it to help organize one of the largest protests in Taiwan's history.
I don't think they're banning it because it promotes what China wants. I think they're banning it because it doesn't promote what the US wants. The US is not offended that you can't criticize Tiananmen Square. It's fine whether you can or can't criticize Tiananmen Square. Only China cares about that.
The reverse also happens - Gaza being the main one. China couldn't give two shits about what happens in the middle east - it's not involved at all. So it lets footage be played sometimes. But the USA cares deeply about making sure young people don't see footage of Gaza and that's the sort of thing that motivates the US to ban this app.
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> 1. New, US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users.
IMO this significantly impacts the value I would get from TikTok, as much of the content I consume on the app is from outside the US
I guess they are hoping the US market will be big enough so self sustain and even entice some foreigners to join the US only app?
Wait, so for everyone else this means American content will be off the main app and be contained? If this stems the tide of MAGA brain rot seeping north into Canada it's an absolute win.
MAGA content is easily avoidable, because the algo already prioritizes what you engage with. For me in Canada, there's just a lot of funny/insightful US-based content I do watch.
TikTok got significantly less interesting when the US blocked themselves earlier this year, if that happens permanently it'll probably hurt TikTok worldwide.
Will people just stay with the old app out due to inertia? Or will there be annoying "blocked in your country" type messages until you switch? (at which point you won't know what's been blocked in your country)
Will there be an old app and new app available both to US residents? I don't see how that'd help them reach any of their stated goals, as I'd expect overwhelming majority of users to a) simply not care and stay, b) prefer the better international app with more content from all around the world
In other words, TikTok US becomes TruthSocial Reels?
I wonder where all the liberal content will go.
> 5. Algorithm will be initially licensed, but has to be reengineered to comply with the law.
The government board director is one thing, but what exactly does this mean?
The law simply requires that the content recommendation algorithm not be shared between the two apps. [0] Thus, it must be rebuilt by the new team, and not maintained or controlled by the old team.
The licensing approach is a temporary solution to keep the app working from day 1. One of ByteDance's complaints during the lawsuit earlier this year was that is was going to be technically infeasible for engineers to rebuild something as complex and essential as the content algorithm in the short window of time they had before the law went into effect.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
"The term “qualified divestiture” means a divestiture or similar transaction that ... would result in the relevant foreign adversary controlled application no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary; and ... precludes the establishment or maintenance of any operational relationship between [the two apps/teams], including any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing."
Gotcha, ok - that’s less alarming.
"Hey Claude, please re-write this algorithm"
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
All this to "protect the children"... why are US politicians so interested in kids? Politicians being involved in a kids app? Why? Could it be to curate some naughty list for future exploitation (blackmails anyone?) or to get location data about the kids? Mmm wonder when masked """"law enforcement"""" will disappear the parents and traffic the kids somewhere?
Just ban children from the internet, make it the responsibility of the parents. Its that simple. Make it illegal for kids to have access, especially to user generated content (incl chat), same level as firearms, pharma drugs, voting, entering into contracts etc. Internet is and was never a place for children to begin with.
This is a land grab under the guise of "protecting the children"
10% of intel 80% of TikTok ??% Meta ??% Google ??% Amazon ??% S&P500
N. 2 and 3 concerns me quite a lot. This looks like a thing people would 'mock' China for
Won't this separate out the US community on TikTok completely? Almost like the GFW ironically.
The name "Great Firewall of America" is already taken (and refers to Cloudflare), so we'll have to call this one something else.
>New, US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users.
I'm from Europe so if I want to follow US content creators, I need to download separate US specific app?! Kinda silly.
>> US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users
Very interesting! The separate "in content" bit in particular. Sounds like US TikTok will now be one giant echo chamber. Users outside the US will miss some US content but tbh, I find TikTok content is actually quite localised anyway. Big benefits for users outside the US are:
1. US doesn't get my data.
2. Hopefully less US political BS to swipe past.
3. I am much less concerned with the sway China has on Western Europe than the sway the US has and am therefore much happier using a China-backed version of the app sans US content/users/control/propaganda. The extreme brain rot causing people outside the US to care about 'MAGA' or that recently assassinated man will hopefully start to recede. That can only be a good thing. We have plenty of our own polarising issues without importing irrelevant ones.
Massive win for Meta as it'll push a lot of folks towards Instagram Reels, which won't be siloed from the rest of the world.
The split between the US and the rest of the world maybe never was bigger than today
Cool. Chuck Schumer will clutch something and say “this may be a sign of something not good.”
Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of TikTok and have many critical opinions of Ayn Rand’s philosophies, but…
This gives me vibes of a weird company takeover, a la the kinds of things that happened in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: government-driven benefits to large corporations and investors with friends in the right places, government involvement, forced licensure of a core aspect of the product (Rearden Metal?).
I’d like to learn more about: what are some other similar instances of such a thing?
> Oracle... Horowitz
tl;dr: the entire US media is now controlled by men who've bent the knee to Trump and have demonstrated that theyre willing to take an activist editorial role.
I was really disappointed by this. Do Americans have no dignity or ego? Are they so conditioned to fall in line with a leader?
Keeping their heads down, to keep their heads?
government appointed commissars eh. i see were bringing it back eh. bet they will make sure it wont criticize a certain group of people lol
id like to see a similiar setup done in canada for each of the US big tech companies.
owned by canadian oligarchs, with one CBC appointed director
I could see local variants of American data dealers for Europe as well. Facebook without all the privacy issues would be borderline useable, maybe.
Of all the tech companies, Oracle seems to be making the most and a killing due to Larry's cosy relations with Trump.
Last week's announcement that they have a 500 B deal with Open AI, and now this.
Elon really fucked up!
Who would have thunk, that a favor would evaporate soon! Isn't this like negotiating 101?
Key details:
1. DOA app nobody wants
2. whocares
3. see 2
Good luck to the administration while trying to roll this out.