Same deal here.

This is essentially the same thing though I guess

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gPKw3cM3DUI

Larry Ellison is a vocal Zionist, leaked emails show that he vetted Marco Rubio for "fealty to Israel". In one email he outright said "Great meeting with Marco Rubio. I set him up to meet with Tony Blair. Marco will be a great friend for Israel".

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/larry-ellison-vetted-marco-ru...

This is the man who would be given control of Tik Tok and its algorithm.

Also the reason behind the 60 minutes fiasco and the CBS acquisition which had Bari Weiss installed there.

[1] https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20240311/HR%207521%20Up...

[2] https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr1081/BILLS-118hr1081ih....

Additionally, information about what was going on in Gaza was widely available and widely discussed on all social media platforms and in the mainstream media.

Additionally, if you're defending TikTok because it allowed them to amplify support for the Palestinian cause, it's interesting that TikTok themselves claim that you are wrong, as they said to the US Supreme court that "allegations that TikTok has amplified support for either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are unfounded". Are they lying here? If so, why should we trust them with control over mass social media? If they're not lying, you are wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok_in_the_...

That's why the every proposed TikTok ban is so specific to TikTok, and never does anything to actually regulate the naughty things TikTok does, because that would mean hurting American social media companies.

Oh, do tell of the countries that aren’t uniparties when talking about national security.

Oh, none of them? So just making a bullshit false equivalence?

I do agree that Trump, in both his administrations, has made it starkly clear that its checks and balances are quite impotent against a person or party that doesn’t care to follow the rules, so long as they have enough supporters that also don’t care, or are misled

The US government has considered TikTok a national security issue for a long time, and considered banning it even back in 2020 - a full 3 years before October 7th. So it has nothing to do with Israel, or Jews, or Gaza, and everything to do with not following American laws, defending against asymmetric warfare from the Chinese government, and national security.

For what it's worth, I am not aware of any evidence that TikTok did anything intentional to promote anti-US narratives. To be honest, I think they accomplished that goal by simply promoting what people wanted to see, which is in large part, simply the truth. The so-called enemies of America do not have to work very hard or lie, they just need to expose our propaganda in a very straightforward fashion.

Since the COVID crisis at least, US owned social media companies have become very censorious and we know they tamper with the algorithms. It may be that simply having a less biased algorithm is too clarifying for American elites.

Like I'm sorry, there is just no debate to be had here. Israel is committing a genocide, confirmed by the UN, recognized by anyone who looks at what's going on there with an even remotely objective eye, and the only social platform on which that message is getting out is facing legal scrutiny in the entire West is TikTok. This doesn't even require a conspiracy board, it's literally three red strings between TikTok, Israel, and the US. Despite worldwide propaganda efforts on the part of every corporate media in existence all screaming that the genocide isn't a genocide, a full 25% of people according to a poll I saw are fully convinced the genocide Israel is committing is in fact a genocide.

This would be fucking pathetic if not for the fact that every organized world entity involved in this utter sham was so incredibly powerful and their influence wasn't borderline inescapable.

"How TikTok Was Blindsided by U.S. Bill That Could Ban It" (https://www.wsj.com/tech/how-tiktok-was-blindsided-by-a-u-s-...)

> its very obvious from public statements by both co-sponsors that the primary motivation for this bill was concern with Chinese influence.

Here's an op-ed authored by bill sponsor Mike Gallagher entitled, "Why Do Young Americans Support Hamas? Look at TikTok.": https://www.thefp.com/p/tik-tok-young-americans-hamas-mike-g...

Maybe he's being downvoted for taking the discussion off-topic.

I understand where you’re coming from - “they ban us so we’ll ban you” is a valid sentiment. But this grandstanding is like slapping a bandaid on a leaky tub and calling it “Job done”. I’m almost being transported to the 1940s with this McCarthy-lite take.

Everything that TikTok is doing is being done by Meta, Snap, Instagram, etc. If it’s not done through TikTok it’ll be done somewhere else. But sure, instead of passing real privacy laws let’s just also be authoritarian - I’m sure that’ll solve the problem.

And then I read the next line and realised you meant China.

The thing about Trump saying it was a done deal*, like most other things he says, was true in the sense that the deal to find the US investors to buy the app is done. And having the "blessing" or any other uttering of China's President Xi Jinping is not the same as having the official action of China finalizing the sale. It did allow him to sign an executive order allowing tiktok to continue operating while the deal is being finalized -- and additional executive order 90 day extensions in the mean time.

With the sale going to the usual suspects, Larry Ellison, Abu Dhabi MGX, it makes this look more like Trump is being played at his own game. Or, like the other comment says about ByteDance and China mocking the US in this silly posturing. Maybe they get it done on Monday, or give it another 90 days.

*See paltering.[0][1]. It's the reason you get people saying he lied and others saying he's unfairly being called a liar. A more accurate way to describe what he says is: manipulation. Even news outlets are capable of being manipulated (and some may encourage it), which in turn causes all of them to be called "partisan hacks" and the populace loses trust -- but in the wrong things/people.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paltering

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171114-the-disturbing-a...

I don’t see how a competent legal team could not shred this whole effort at disowning TikTok and at the very least make it extremely expensive politically and even to the core foundation of legitimacy of the current government in what is for some reason still called the USA in spite of gross patterns of consistent material violations of all the terms.

Obviously the law can be contrary to free speech the ideal, in this case.

Here's Mitt Romney explaining that "the number of mentions of Palestinians" was the reason why "there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down (potentially) TikTok": https://x.com/wideofthepost/status/1787104142982283587

> Additionally, if you're defending TikTok because it allowed them to amplify support for the Palestinian cause, it's interesting that TikTok themselves claim that you are wrong, as they said to the US Supreme court that "allegations that TikTok has amplified support for either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are unfounded". Are they lying here? If so, why should we trust them with control over mass social media? If they're not lying, you are wrong.

The sentence that you quoted from that Wikipedia page came at the end of this paragraph:

  Several officials subsequently cited alleged pro-Palestinian bias on the app. While advocating for a ban, Representative Mike Gallagher alleged "rampant pro-Hamas propaganda on the app". Senators Mitt Romney, Josh Hawley, Representative Mike Lawler, and other Republicans have also alleged that TikTok had a pro-Palestine bias, with Lawler even alleging that TikTok was being manipulated during pro-Palestinian protests at colleges. In a filing to the Supreme Court, TikTok's attorneys said, "Allegations that TikTok has amplified support for either side of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict are unfounded."

Facebook, Instagram are not naughty. They're well embedded in the political economic ruling elite of the country. They amplify or mute whatever messages that elite wants amplified or muted. The US can't make rules for TikTok to do the same because that would be illegal, besides being too obviously partisan.

From those investigations, it was revealed that Russia and likely other foreign adversaries do simply want to brainrot Americans for the sake of destabilizing the country. If TikTok gets investigated for Chinese intererfence, China can pressure Bytedance into sabotaging these investigations.

This admin is so transparently corrupt, and they're making out like bandits.

Trump and his family have made billions of dollars on the crypto rug pull. Everyone knew it was a shitcoin from the start.

Trump has pardoned violent criminals and felony fraudsters for business deals and "donations".

His family's net worth has estimated to have risen billions this year alone.

Elon Musk essentially bought his way into the control of the government and tried to buy off votes.

Kristi Noem funneled at least one sole source contract worth $220 million dollars to a firm closely tied to her and her previous political campaigns.

Ron DeSantis spent $250 million dollars of no-bid contracts for essentially a tent interment camp, many of questionable value and to politically tied companies

They don't care if you don't like them and I don't think they care if they accomplish what they ran on. They have done a bang up job enriching themselves and their donor class, however.

*What is more likely is that TikTok isn't actually more pro-Palestinian than Meta, but the demographics that use it actually are which affects the algorithm and user reports.

I don't speculate on their motivations, I'm not interested. I rarely use the word evil, but I think this qualifies.

This is hardly the "gotcha" you're framing it as. Building sovereign capability has shot to the top of a lot nations priority lists.

In a lot of industries this is also just standard even amongst allies: national security related contracts have extensive clauses about ownership, structure and access.

Those American employees are required to basically uphold the interests of the CCP. This is done as part of an agreement around their stock grants apparently. From https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2025/01/14/exclusive-d... there are details on what executives of TikTok have to agree to in writing:

> “You shall comply with applicable laws and guidelines and abide by public order and good customs, the socialist system, national interests, legal rights of other citizens, and information authenticity requirements,” the purported Douyin agreement reviewed by the DCNF states.

> The document also lists a number of prohibited activities for employees, including “overthrowing the socialist system,” “inciting secession,” “undermining national religious policies, or promoting cults and superstitions,” as well as injunctions against “meaningless information or deliberate use of character combinations to avoid technical censorship.”

And in fact, they’re required to report to a ByteDance management team in China, and acknowledge that they’re employees of ByteDance (and therefore NOT the American company):

> TikTok executives also sign agreements with ByteDance consenting to digital surveillance and report to China-based leadership, according to other documents and audio recordings supporting Puris’ lawsuit.

> Other documents also seem to indicate TikTok ultimately considered Puris to be a ByteDance employee.

> While onboarding in 2019, Puris was allegedly required to sign one hiring document reviewed by the DCNF affirming: “I am a director, executive officer or general partner of ByteDance LTD.”

While technically true, these articles give context about the level of decision-making control and data access from ByteDance, as of the time of their publication.

https://restofworld.org/2024/tiktok-chinese-us-ban/ (2024)

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-... (2022)

with it changed to peddle the american propaganda line, the overall media is more biased than it was

I don't understand why that's your response to a question about them both being true. It seems like a perfectly legitimate observation: China can and probably is leveraging social media to shape global discussion of political topics that they deem sensitive. And it's also the case that at least for some voting block of conservative Republicans in the US Senate, it's an opportunity to potentially shut down communication on Israel's actions in Gaza. It's a classic both can be true situation.

I actually think you're right that Tiktok isn't necessarily intentionally promoting Gaza but that it has organically emerged simply because it legitimately is an issue that is an issue that has provoked moral outrage of the western world. To the extent that China is shaping anything, I think it's more about suppressing disapproved narratives than amplifying approved ones, as well as surveillance of Western opinion that can be channeled into soft power infrastructure outside the bounds of the internet.

I don't think we can trust TikTok to be a defender of global human rights. China doesn't have a great record on this, with Muslim minorities in particular. The furor over Uyghurs in China has died down due to China's strong international influence but that doesn't mean China is respecting Uyghurs human rights.

I think there are important differences between China any democracy. In China, each company needs a internal party cell or party commitee to police and control that companies actions. If you don't find differences between China and open democracies compelling, we won't find much common ground.

Nonetheless, we are seeing US tech companies facing scrutiny in Europe.

Something else I'll say is I think some of the big tech companies should be broken up, which I see achieving similar goals by similar means. Reduce centralized control by a change in ownership. If China were a corporation instead of a country, old likewise advocating divesting control of TikTok

Yes, they are all manipulating feeds. Yes, they are are using psychological sabotage and attention hacks to steal as much attention as they possibly can from every pair of eyeballs they encounter.

If Meta, Youtube, Snap, et al do something that is illegal, or violates social norms, or commits any of a thousand different offenses, legal or cultural or otherwise, they can be held to account. They have. Facebook and Instagram and Youtube and all US platforms have been sued, settle out of court, have been subpoenaed and forced to account for themselves in front of congress, etc.

China can use TikTok for many purposes, whether it's purely disruptive, or in pursuit of nation-state agendas, or any sort of nefarious deliberate action they might take. You can hold Zuck accountable. You cannot, with China, and because all Chinese companies are under state control, they are by definition not operating in good faith. They do not follow trade agreements, norms, or deal in good faith. They will steal IP, ignore sanctions, and do whatever benefits them most regardless of any agreements to the contrary, and will actively seek to undermine opposition to their greatest advantage. And they're more or less immune to accountability for anything they do outside of China, except and unless they make the state look bad, or costs them money or reputation in the market.

China chose to deliberately manipulate and abuse their platform by using it to cause all sorts of users to flood their representatives with calls - that one move, by itself, the choice of a paltform to deliberately intervene at scale and advocate for political action, should be sufficient to have seized the platform outright, and then tell China to go pound sand. Imagine how they'd respond to us broadcasting American Freedom TV across their whole country from Starlink satellites, with free satellite 5G compatible with their carriers, bypassing all their great firewall and censorship? As much as I loathe the authoritarianism, we ostensibly have to respect state sovereignty - China deliberately and specifically violated US sovereignty by manipulating a bunch of useful idiots to their own purposes, flexing on the US, threatening them with manipulating the electorate unless they played ball on TikTok control.

We should just seize it and tell them to pound sand, then auction the assets. You can't trust the code, so sell off the name, domain, the network to other platforms if they want to rebuild it, then scour the content and software and hardware, burn it, and salt the earth over it.

Meta, Snap, Instagram (i.e. Meta), are US-based media companies and subject to US regulation and jurisprudence.

TikTok operates under the jurisdiction of authoritarian adversary. This undue foreign influence is the sticking point, not merely the massive media sway.

The thing about Trump saying it’s a done deal is that, like on many other topics, he’s simply lying.

All tiktok code is written by ByteDance engineers in china.

Context for the non-beleivers. I work on the TikTok USDS team.

I don't think the CCP should be in control of it either. Of course, I don't think the UK should be able to backdoor services and devices, and I don't think the EU has any business hurling Chat Control around year after year. I also know that age verification is a similar tactic being employed globally to ensure the same degradation of rights.

That doesn't mean that amplification can't sometimes be a good thing, or that it wasn't a good thing that TikTok allowed so much anti-Israel content even though Instagram and other platforms routinely manipulated discoverability of anti-Israel content. Even if it was part of a plan by China to destabilize the US-Israeli imperial regime; If the US wasn't busy funding and encouraging genocide, we wouldn't have all this rope laying around with which to hang ourselves.

The truth is, the current state of international foreign affairs is so complicated, so messy, that we are not going to be able to have a nuanced yet condensed discussion which fully accounts for everything currently in motion.

So it can be true that TikTok is a tool of China meant to best America in a culture war and destabilize it from within, and that the US Corpgov is still totally in the wrong here and leveraging the usual excuses in a bid to continue the mass consolidation of media distribution under oligarchical control. Everyone is in the wrong here, and you and I are paying for it.

All the worries are about what TikTok could do. Not about anything they've done so far. If you like progressive stuff, you get progressive stuff. If you like right-wing stuff, you get right-wing stuff.

Losing voter confidence in droves? Not a problem if you're confident about establishing the next 1000 year reich.

A massive tax hike on imported goods, making loads of things more expensive? Political suicide! Constant flip-flopping and backtracking on deals? Political suicide! Doing mocking impersonations of disabled people? Political suicide! Accepting donations from neo-nazi groups? Political suicide! Cheating on your pregnant wife with a porn star? Political suicide! Repeatedly visiting a billionaire pedophile's private island? Political suicide!

Except it turns out actually none of that is political suicide.

In my view, people getting exposed to China and seeing them as human will help prevent the war our capitalists are cooking up.

Yeah they can in theory but so can Facebook. Remember Cambridge Analytica? They held Zuck accountable in the sense that there was a slap on the wrist and he went on his merry way. You can similarly hold the ByteDance US CEO accountable and they operate as a US business.

It’s all political theatrics and has nothing do with keeping our personal data safe or protect the American people. These companies might run in the US but corporations are beholden to no nation.

The main difference is political pressure, not legal. US companies will bend the knee to Trump, Chinese companies will do so to Xi. Both of these leaders are authoritarian, but Trump's government is also fascist. However Xi's government is more experienced and successful.

I don't know which is worse, honestly. I mean, at this exact second, China is obviously a more authoritarian state, but the US is riding a bullet train into fascism. So who knows what things will look like in a few years?

Increasingly, this is an argument for the EU banning them. Especially Twitter.

True for Xi but Putin hasn't a clue about what he's doing, calling him a politician is a stretch.

in 2021 they already showed their colors. now i'm sure they've mastered the game of staying.

Of course it's opportunistic of China to criticize the West's supply of bombs to drop on civilians that enable said genocide. But how can the West claim to be upholding the values that say "Uyghur genocide is wrong" while being quiet about the Gazan genocide...

Feel free to argue about semantics and meaning of the G word instead of addressing the death of the rules-based International order.

Losing TikTok would be like if the government shut down the NFL. This isn’t hyperbole.

I never claimed all those other irrelevant things you brought up were political suicide. In that sense they are unrelated topics. Dare I say you’re making a strawman argument.

People can and do think they're "getting away with" a lot more than they come to realize once they're indicted.

Your point remains, of course, that no law is actually self-executing.

In 2023 Azerbaijan ethnically cleansed Nagorno-Karabakh of ethnic Armenians[1]. IMO that is a better example of human rights violations that the west has been silent about. But that happened at the end of September 2023, and folks were more interested in talking about IP.

But my point is you will not hear about Uyghurs on TikTok, and that is a part of why a Chinese controlled media company should not be trusted. To say that you don't have to accept anything about the US or its media companies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Nagorno-Karabakh_...

E.g., overturning roe v wade made a bunch of republican evangelical republican voters grey happy while restricting the lives of a relatively small amount of people. And I know this statement sounds crazy but hear me out and do the math: You have to be a woman (~50% probability), get an abortion (~25% of women in their lifetime) and reside in a state that restricts abortion (about 20% of the population). Multiply those together and you end up with a 2.5% probability that overturning roe v wade has a tangible impact on your life.

You can apply this same concept to a lot of today’s hot button topics.

In contrast, 1/3 of all adults use TikTok. About 60% of people under 30 use it.

Like I said in my other comments, this is comparable to a government shutting down the NFL. It would be a major optics disaster to implement a TikTok ban.

However, the "harms" of exposing the U.S. population to Chinese influence would be to tamp down the population's aggression towards China. I cannot see a single problem with that.

China is a democracy, but it is not a liberal democracy. It represses the right wing and allows democracy within a window defined by the communist party. I think we would be hard pressed to call America a democracy at this point. We repress left wing viewpoints that gain traction and allow "democracy" within a right wing capitalist framework. Funnily enough, this is not a symmetric mirror. Right wing viewpoints are oppressive and minoritarian. Left wing viewpoints at least purport to represent the majority of workers and China does in fact increase the material well-being of its population by leaps and bounds year-over-year.

It's not done a great job of living up to that promise.

That will promptly proceed to bury whatever the government tells them to bury.

Ah, a semantic misunderstanding. By "The West" I mean the governments. Biden had red lines that Netanyahu walked all over. Germany still have their 80 years old guilt and this got exploited by Netanyahu. Etc, etc. There are pockets of protests by governments, but on the whole the Western bureaucracy kept supporting the genocide...

https://lifeattiktok.com/search

Again, focus on thinking about direct and noticeable impact to the lives of the masses, who are largely entirely disconnected or very casually attached to the political discourse. As you pointed out by implication, activists are a small portion of the overall population.

Roe v. Wade is an issue that has theoretical impact to most women from a statistical standpoint. Yes, the destruction of those rights is infuriating, but only if you’re actively paying attention to politics and/or actively trying to get an abortion. And even then, if you live in a large collection of high population blue states, the ruling being reversed didn’t actually change anything for you. Californians, New Yorkers, and Illinoisans didn’t lose any abortion rights.

Most women will never get an abortion. It’s an important political issue but also one that doesn’t impact most people.

59% of adults under the age of 30 use TikTok. 1/3 of all adults use it. Losing that app is a wildly noticeable negative to people’s lives.

The unwashed masses of idiots would see this as “Trump banned TikTok” and wouldn’t know or care that the law comes from congress or any of the other political details.

This is a specular redefining of fundamental terms that prevents meaningful discussion in this context.

We wanted diversity and equality because it served a narcissistic ethnic group, and now that they’ve started realizing that their whole short sighted, self-serving system is turning on them, they’re blowing huge holes in it and getting ever more draconian… as is typical of narcissists, especially malicious and grandiose types of extreme narcissists.

You will not be able to convince these toes of people with things like facts, because what they promote or support is an emotional level conviction similar to a religious one. The whole China ruse itself is just a lie and the ones who used and deployed that lie for strategic ends know this. All those who promote it are just the worthless foot soldiers on a battlefield of and over the mind.

I’m not debating whether the guy is morally reprehensible.

People can ignore that because that doesn’t affect them. Chris Brown is still selling out stadiums because he didn’t personally assault his fans.

What does affect people are everyday things like whether their favorite app got banned or whether eggs are affordable.

I'm not sure what the phrase used for what China is doing is (well, there is "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics"), but as an outsider, my understanding is the idea is that a very broad portion of the population should be involved in the communist party and that democracy should be encouraged within a framework of marxism. Nonetheless, several opposition parties are allowed to run in elections though parties too far to the right are excluded. Still, these opposition parties can be fairly critical and given that China is using a significant capitalist mode of production, some elements of capitalist ideology are allowed. It is a little confusing to be sure.

Wowwww, what a world of difference. /S

Funny you keep picking on nits as if these assholes aren't 2 sides of the same coin. At least admit that you prefer your fascism Trump-branded, at least the alphabet is still legible compared to Chinese Communist fascism.

Just today, China sentenced Jimmy Lai, after preventing such left-wing democratic figures from running for office, because they opposed China's right-wing authoritarianism. Not a great time to make this claim.