There's an irony about the media (including the Times) screaming about Trump trying to fight China economically, and then the Times comes out with a piece about how China is getting everything they want from him?
Makes you wonder what side the Times is really on here.
All journalist organizations, unfortunately, have an incentive to bias content towards maximum clickbait. The ones that don't end up being outcompeted.
I don’t see how there is any cognitive dissonance there. Trump can simultaneously do disastrous things for our economy in terms of global trade with China as well as allow for us to be routed by Chinese strategists.
There's considerable evidence and reason to believe Washington invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to supercharge opium production (banned by Taliban) and flood/destabilize the region (China, Iran) as part of a deliberate, covert and asymmetric drug proliferation strategy.
Now, you could argue that the subsequent invasion of Iraq was counterproductive to that, but I don't see that argument having water.
You said: “There's considerable evidence and reason to believe Washington invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to supercharge opium production”, yet you provide nothing to back up your claim. It is not trolling to point that out.
Your link to some stats on levels of poppy production does not support your conspiracy theory.
“Orange santa” in Chinese would be pretty unwieldy as a nickname. “橙黄圣诞老人” is 6 syllables.
But there has been a meme in China for ages that Trump is secretly a Chinese guy named “Chuan Jianguo” (Jianguo means “building the nation”) who was sent by China to destroy America from within.
There was a good tweet after election day where someone wrote that a Chinese classmate was talking about their religious father in Beijing, who thought that Trump was chosen by God to win the election -- but only as part of a larger divine plan to destroy America. Pretty funny, to be honest.
Stick it, because? Always ask why. Perhaps the orange man is shitting in gardens far and wide abroad? Personally I do not want America to fail at all, to flourish even, and for it to remain a democracy at that. It helps. The orange man seems to have differently opinion.
I think one of my biggest frustrations with tech right now is how credulous they are with regard to China vs USA arguments. I see it on HN regularly.
I am not saying the China shock was fake, or state surveillance is fine, or that they don’t exploit migrant workers, or that their currency manipulation and financial repression were/are good. I just think we should be skeptical that national security arguments are motivated by virtue, especially when “the good” is largely confined to what’s good for USA tech
Regardless of where you stand on American politics, it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions.
This is not a left versus right thing. China being unchallenged in the world will spell a quality of life decrease for us in the West. They are not “the good guys.” You’re free to see both parties as ‘neutral’ in alignment, but you still don’t want to have to be the losing party when they come into conflict. My point is China is not going to be sharing any of what they gain with Americans, even the ones who cheer for them - it’ll in fact be coming at your expense.
The CPC having a direct feed into the brains of every Gen Z and younger American is trivially easy to exploit - and there is a 0% chance that they won’t do so next year when they will likely invade Taiwan. If China is in control of TikTok, they’ll boost a ton of propaganda, supposedly people “from Taiwan” who greet the PLA as liberators, explaining how Taiwan being independent is actually oppression, and how they’ve always considered themselves part of the PRC, only evil politicians were keeping them apart. And they’ll make sure to suppress all media that exposes the violence on the ground. Finally, they’ll boost content urging Americans to protest US involvement and to sabotage the military, such as by chaining themselves to ships, etc.
Ryan McBeth has made a ton of videos laying out how this will work, and he does a better job than I have of explaining this.
>it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions.
In Gen Z's eyes, America is bad for Americans. That's what happens when you build a low trust society. America spent decades trying to build up a strong rapport among citizens and they tore it down and sold them out in a single generation.
Maybe china will be worse. But the appeals to nationalism simply will not work among our youth. We abandoned them, they will see the village burned to feel its warmth. Already happened in 2024.
I guess my first question is: why would taking control of TikTok prevent bad faith state actors? X, for example, has a lot of issues with foreign accounts spreading propaganda. It seems more like a “moderation at scale” issue to me.
X and Meta do try to uncover and scrub malicious state actors, like the investigation of the 2016 Russia misinformation campaign. Maybe, they could have done more, but there is no reason why they wouldn't put an earnest effort as they have nothing to gain from faking compliance. A social media platform owned by a foreign adversary does have this incentive.
X may be owned by a crazy Elon, but that doesn't change that X today still has no incentive to allow for malicious state actors, especially under government pressure. In fact, they recently exposed that a lot of extremist political accounts were based out of foreign countries.
It also of ingores the cases where state actors' and some wing of domestic politics have aligned interests (USSR & Communist parties in the early o mid 20th century, or Russia sponsoring/infiltrating rightwing countries in Western Europe & America in the 21st century)
I'd buy these arguments if America was a place that cared about its citizens and not a country that lets a small group of very elite, very rich, people ruin the lives of tens of millions of Americans subjecting them to poverty to make a buck.
The last war China was involved with was 1979 compared to America, today mind you, that is on the cusp of invading Venezuela because Rubio has a moronic axe to grind.
It's really hard to not see the facade for what it is: rich people are upset that their world order is collapsing.
Frankly who care? Give me universal medicare, universal childcare, and public higher education then maybe, just maybe, I might start to care about all this stuff that only seems to make people lives worse not better.
> This is not a left versus right thing. China being unchallenged in the world will spell a quality of life decrease for us in the West.
America's incompetent leadership is self-inflicted. Biden's 2020 campaign strategy was pro status quo ante - which I find similar to your appeal to "normalcy". Unfortunately, this message did not resonate with voters in 2024. I suspect "getting back to normal" is not enough for Gens Y & Z, who have already lost a class war whose existence they may not be aware of.
The language of class war precludes any sort of repair of the situation. I see a ton of young people at work outside of my group within the org who should be getting paid better. When we're in management we have a responsibility to try to argue for narratives that lead to that outcome. And when we vote we need to remember that things that look bad for us homeowners like allowing big development companies to come in and raze all of our houses and build townhomes and apartments for rent might be necessary to keep the bad situation from getting worse. I think in the end what will save us is the big demographic crunch that's going to happen in the next 15 years, because there will be a lot of housing stock suddenly on the market with no buyers. We're all going to get an opportunity then to fix a lot of these problems. Or, if we do nothing and let the status quo reign, our kids will suddenly find themselves renting everything they use for the rest of their lives.
Still, it's like being on a plane and you're unhappy with the destination so you vote for a new pilot who has promised to immediately crash the plane into the ground.
I would describe the over-fiscalization of housing and education loans designed to increase profits for shareholders as different fronts in the same class war that young people have already lost.
> or state surveillance is fine, or that they don’t exploit migrant workers, or that their currency manipulation and financial repression were/are good.
can you clarify if you’re talking about China or the US?
I don’t know. In a way I don’t think it matters if China are currently actively engaged in altering the opinions of Americans, what matters is whether they can. And an unknowable algorithm absolutely gives them the power to.
IMO the bigger problem is that national security is only part of the problem. An unknowable algorithm controlled by the Ellisons is not necessarily less dangerous than one controlled by China, the motivations are just different.
They can do whatever they want with it with the sure knowledge that the users will never leave it. Tiktok is the digital equivalent of "getting kids addicted to heroin"
Completely anecdotally, I've seen Tiktok get replaced almost entirely by Instagram Reels in the sample space of, well, links to funny videos people send me. It doesn't count for much, but I do feel people might have slightly overestimated how much sticking power a platform like this has.
Actually I think there’s an important distinction there: the draw of TikTok isn’t people sending videos to you, it’s the algorithm that automatically suggests them to you. I’ve heard it describes as uncanny at matching your interests and Reels isn’t anywhere near it.
I’ve used both and I think that’s cope. There’s more younger creators and maybe more varied content on TikTok.
If you want proof, watch someone’s feed with them. Invariably they will start to apologize. Classic “he’s different when we’re alone” rationalization for an addictive substance
While TikTok is clearly still dominant, I don't think it has much of a moat.
If Insta and youtube shorts get enough traction, there's no reason creators won't simply post to each of them to maximize their reach. The legacy platforms are heavily courting/promoting short form video, why leave possible monetization on the table?
Hell, I'm too old for their demo, but I see TikTok videos posted to Reddit and even BlueSky.
A lot of the people in my age group (Millennials) decided that TikTok was where we were going to get off the "hot new social media platform" train.
The Zoomers and GenAlpha kids seemed to be the people really using it, but I'm just a crotchety old guy with a bald head and a gut and an office job at this point, so I don't know what the hip young people are up to with their Tok Clocks and their loud rock music.
No but everyone has been or has known someone who rages when they lose access to their videogames, and everyone knows someone who has played videogames to the point that it is detrimental to their school or work obligations.
You can replace "videogames" with literally anything and it still works.
Sports, dance, family, etc.
Everybody knows too many people for an anecdote to make videogames and heroin the same. It's like pointing out some school shooter played a violent video games; so did the people they shot. You need to disprove the null hypothesis; not show that there exists evidence.
Not true, YouTube is the dominant player in short form content, and while TikTok has a loyal fanbase, I don't think it's a wall YouTube couldn't climb.
For those that are downvoting this based on vibes, please feel free to get recent view counts that prove me wrong.
Comparing views cross-platform is not a very useful study and YouTube routinely adjusts what a view means. Shorts changed earlier this year to count all playbacks and loops without a minimum watch time requirement. https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/333869549/a-change...
My relative runs a digital marketing company. The only platform they can reach 16-20 age bracket is via TikTok. Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for older people still work, but are fading.
YouTube Shorts is littered with reposted content from TikTok and Instagram, with a layer of AI slop on over it all. It seems overrun by people who don’t make content of their own, but were looking for a quick and easy payday.
YouTube keeps pushing it harder and harder. On the AppleTV, search often returns 90% Shorts, with no way to filter them out.
I think the main problem is a YouTube "customer" is there because they're looking for long form content, and someone looking for sort videos is probably already either a TikTok or Instagram user with no particular reason to switch.
Not downvoting you but such a broad statement is pretty meaningless if you don't segment by age group. Also Tiktok captures almost the same percentage of US ad video spending - that wouldn't be the case if youtube had so many more viewers that matter to advertisers.
Youtube Shorts, maybe, but Youtube is obviously broader than TikTok, and it is not just a dopamine machine, unlike TikTok. Can you find research seminars on TikTok?
TikTok has longer content, some of it quite academic, but it's all vertical. I don't know about any one else's TikTok, but mine has a dedicated STEM feed if I scroll all the way to the left at the top. The problem is their vaunted algorithm will prioritize whatever content you happen to come across and then linger on, which tends to end up not prioritizing eg math content until you reset your algorithm and search for content you want the fresh algorithm to prioritize.
Tiktok is not heroin. Tiktok does not make you vomit if you quit using it. Tiktok does not give you a 5 year life expectancy. You can't overdose on it and die. Tiktok does not make you rob a grandma to get your next fix of it.
I hate social media more than most people do, and I don't use tiktok and don't think anyone else should, but can we all please stop comparing a mobile phone app to using heroin? It's misinformed and dangerous to make rhetorical comparisons like that.
I empathize w/ your take. I've occasionally responded similarly to the thoughtless use of "cancer" in shallow analogies, as a survivor who's also watched it kill several people I dearly love. I don't have direct experience w/ heroin, but the film "Requiem For A Dream" was unforgettable and helps me better understand its evil.
Unfortunately, whether it's a deadly drug or a deadly disease, these casual references are unlikely to drop from public discourse anytime soon. And I personally would rather live in a world where insensitive or potentially-triggering language is gently discouraged, than one where the pendulum swings too far the other way towards censorship or radical left woke cancel culture. Words can be unintentionally callous without being "micro-aggressions". (And I say that as a liberal progressive.)
Thanks for posting in a personal and persuasive manner, instead of anger. Yours is the more effective approach anyway.
It's like how the Sackler's did everything they can to make opioids more addictive and increase profit margins, there is virtually no difference between this and Zuckerberg hiring psychologists to make his apps more addictive.
You're right, heroin is merely physical addiction. TikTok is psychological, emotional and social crack for young malleable minds. Produced by the subjects of, and in cahoots with, an aggressive totalitarian regime that has about as much respect for human life as Oracle has for its customers.
Also assuming your heroin isn't tainted it isn't toxic and you can have a normal life expectancy.
>Tiktok does not give you a 5 year life expectancy
12 year old life expectancy then?
> The lawsuit, filed in the US claims that Isaac Kenevan, 13, Archie Battersbee, 12, Julian "Jools" Sweeney, 14, and Maia Walsh, 13, died while attempting the so-called "blackout challenge". Four children died because of, compared to one, who injects?
Heroin invokes addiction, TikTok does that. Heroin can cause physical dependency, TikTok brews this. Heroin is highly addictive, isn't TikTok to the young viewer?
I still hold my point that TikTok can be distilled and viewed as a form of Digital Heroin. Evidence shows.
Depends, how rich are they in this hypothetical scenario?It's being poor that's the problem, and we know that's true because of the many rock stars who've lived with a heroin addiction for many many years.
If it's the first thing you think about when you wake up, and it kills you to sleep at night, and you think about it all day, sure, one's a highly addictive habit that destroys lives, and the other is heroin. Which is also a highly addictive habit that destroys lives. Funnily enough, one destroys lives because it's legal, and the other destroys lives because it's illegal. But if you're taking your phone to bed with you at night, and it's the first thing you check in the morning, before you even have a thought to yourself, okay, you're not injecting it with a needle under a freeway underpass but after you get fired for watching TikTok on the clock and can't pay your rent, is you're landlord gonna care when you don't pay rent whether you got fired for drugs or a smartphone addiction?
Because "digital heroin" is a nonsense phrase used as a thought-terminating cliché.
> when the side-effects are the same of?
Assuming that this is intended to be something like "when the side effects are the same as those of heroin?" then the premise is false; the effects (side or otherwise) of TikTok are not meaningfully similar to those of heroin.
some people feel like they are addicted to short form content but it’s really nothing like a drug addiction much less an addiction to something as devastating as heroin
TikTok (along with the other platforms) is more like cigarettes, or sugar.
It's highly addictive. The negative effects are somewhat diffuse and may take a while to really impact your life, but they're very real.
And, rather importantly, it's legal and widely available, and the industry behind them is suppressing evidence of their harms and making tons of money off of addiction.
I guess so. 36 and having seen the internet from IRC to how it is now arguing over some internet forum because views are different. How old are you?
TikTok causes chemical release in the brain and which can cause other self psychological damage. Heroin causes chemical release in the brain in the brain, and can cause other self psychological damage.
Both are addictions, both are hard to fight. Some find it easier some find it hard.
The effects of one are more devastating sure, Alcohol is more damaging than Caffeine; I'm not ruling that out.
However the effects of Heroin which comes with addiction and the cravings are some-what mimicked within the realms of TikTok.
To op below:
I'm now rate limited, so I can't reply directly.
A drug, a real life substance that is designed to alter human chemistry. Cannabis, Caffine, MDMA, DMT all alter your brain chemistry organically.
You cannot compare one or to something that is man-made digital. You can however compare the effects of a substance that is organically designed to that of something is digital. The relation of effects of TikTok to Heroin are very similar.
Social media is being designed as a digital service to alter human chemistry. It works, why do you think the world is in utter shit? Why do you think social enterprises pay big bucks to exploit the human psyche by hiring sociologists/psychologists?
The TikTok icon on mobile devices is strategically designed to manipulate and trigger a response.
Facebook is a grand example with the A/B emotional testing they did with Cambridge Analytica which that is that is far worse then heroin IMO. At least with Heroin you need to inject.
> TikTok causes chemical release in the brain and can cause other self psychological damage.
You're literally describing any activity that someone enjoys generating natural dopamine, and then comparing it to a drug that crosses your blood-brain barrier and mimicks your brain's chemistry to give you a super-charged chemical version of that. The difference in dopamine levels is orders of magnitude. Your brain re-wires itself to handle the level of dopamine produced and you start only feeling normal if you're constantly using the drug. I would be surprised if Tiktok generated even 1/10th the dopamine level of using methamphetamine. It all honestly sounds quite fun, but my awareness of the consequences will prevent me from ever trying them.
Eating a good meal, having sex, finishing writing your first novel, winning a race, doing breath work, doing yoga, rock climbing, and an unlimited supply of examples generate dopamine in our brains the same way that Tiktok does. They can all ruin your life just as much, if you allow them to.
A much better comparison would be to describe Tiktok as a "digital slot machine", and indeed slot machine mechanics have been heavily studied by social media platforms to make usage more habitual. Nir Eyal's Hooked was an interesting and informative read on this topic. If he describes social media as heroin in the book I'll happily take the self-own.
Does anyone actually not realize this was to stymie criticism of Israel? You Netanyahu bragging about how this is central to winning the propaganda war. Ellison is the biggest private donor to the IDF. Put it together.
The deal itself feels messy and political, not like a serious solution to data or security concerns. In the end, the risks are still there, and it’s hard to see what regular users actually win from this.
The point of the whole Congressional exercise was to grab ownership of a highly lucrative social network on the cheap to the American investor class. Whoever won the presidential election got to choose the winners.
lol are you really suggesting that China, out of the goodness of their hearts, made TikTok with the objective to give Americans “better” trash social media sites?
The TikTok deal seems to be more about empowering US corporations than anything else. It seems as if they hate all forms of competition under the orange man ruling the USA right now, so of course TikTok must be crushed (not that I use any of those antisocial media, it is just an observation made).
We see something similar in Europe in that Musk burps out the EU must disband after they fined his company for breaking local laws. It's like a really stupid variant of corporatocracy dominating the USA right now; at the least in the past it was a bit more subtle. Now it is like barbarian posing as oligarchs are having crazy fits. I think 99.9% of their wealth must be confiscated and given to The People - too much wealth makes the mind weak and leads them to act as tyrannical parasites.
I am still baffled, because wasn't there a bipartisan law passed banning TikTok? Is that just being ignored while a deal is orchestrated to sell it to Larry Ellison (and install Barron Trump on the TikTok Board of Directors)? The enforcement of the law is confusing to me here.
You're not wrong. It was very clearly illegal for TikTok to maintain operations in the US since the law started applying, and yet the US government ordered everyone to disregard the law and they just went along with it.
This is another sign of the US' decline. The refusal to follow inconvenient laws.
Technically, the law did allow the president to approve a one-time extension if there was a deal under negotiation. But every subsequent extension (I think we’re on number 3 or 4 now) had no legal basis in the text of the legislation and both Apple and Google are clearly in violation of the law for not banning it from their app stores after the 1st extension
> Is that just being ignored while a deal is orchestrated
Yes. There is a series of executive orders (eg [1]) that literally say "To permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed, the Attorney General shall not take any action on behalf of the United States to enforce the Act ...". The "PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS ACT" only allows the US AG to sue for enforcement, so this essentially is completely waiving enforcement.
This is why congress often gives independent agencies or private actors the right to sue in an act - because the DOJ cannot be trusted to fairly enforce laws if there is even the slightest political or economic valence to them.
what about ..the slightest political or economic valence to..
um..
the Attorney General?
or even worse..
what about ..the slightest political or economic valence.. to ..independent agencies or private actors.
That's, like, explicit corruption isn't it? We'll give this private actor the exclusive right to enforce this law. (A law they themselves probably asked for?)
Quoting TFA: "It’s worth noting that none of this was really legal; the law technically stated that TikTok shouldn’t have been allowed to exist for much of this year. Everyone just looked the other way while Trump and his cronies repeatedly ignored deadlines and hammered away at the transfer."
They I understand it: There was a deal to ban TikTok unless ownership changes --- the original intention was no Chinese involvement, but now it seems "ownership change" means the ownership is amicable to the current president. There was also something of a grace period for when that ban went into effect if TikTok could show they were actively in the process of finding a new owner. The current president basically just kept insisting that grace period was in effect while he constructed a bid for ownership that aligned with his and his friends (business) interests.
Basically, Congress did not do its job and ignored the very law they voted for.
That's the (obvious, I guess) comparison I was thinking of too, but IIRC correctly the issues there were 1) allegations of bribes (which ended up being false/that witness arrested by the FBI for lying about it) and 2) Biden improperly leveraging the State Dept (which was also found to be untrue by two different Republican Senate investigations).
Now if the issue was Hunter Biden being on the board at all -- even if independent of any Joe Biden dealmaking -- then I'm very curious how the Republicans sounding alarms back then react to the Barron Trump TikTok board seat now.
> if these folks were all so concerned about U.S. consumer privacy, they should have passed a functional modern internet privacy law applying to all U.S. companies and their executives.
This is the way. I wonder if we'll ever see the day that consumers get a fighting chance.
Is there some provision that enabled the executive branch to keep extending the purchase deadline?
If not, the sale is illegal. Congress passed a law saying that TikTok was to be banned. Not "can be sold after a bunch of backroom deals by tech aristocracy that happens to be friends with an incredibly corrupt President", but banned. SCOTUS agreed that the law held up to scrutiny.
The law [1] does not work as an magic all encompassing "ban". It says operating and distributing the app is is unlawful, and the consequence is a huge fine and the enforcement mechanism is suit from the US AG. Nothing says that a sale after doing something unlawful is illegal.
The bigger issue is that the Trump directed the AG not to enforce the law. So something is plainly illegal but is de-facto legal because of executive pronouncement. That is extremely worrying because one aspect of totalitarianism is that the dicta of the ruler has effect of law.
“Your information” was never the important thing. That’s a sideshow. The important thing is that controlling an algorithmic feed that is wildly popular amongst multiple generations of Americans means the CPC can control American public opinion at the touch of a button. Literally no country would allow a sworn adversary to do that. Why do you think China doesn’t allow Facebook or Twitter? And those aren’t even government-controlled American companies (sure, they’re subject to coercion, but not to the extent Chinese companies are).
OK so now "Larry Ellison, a slaver nation, and a PE surveillance focused firm" can "can control American public opinion at the touch of a button"? That seems just as bad.
It is not access to our data that was the concern. It is manipulating the opinions of Americans by controlling the algorithms that determine what Americans see. How is that concern alleviated by this deal? It is not. And that's the problem with this deal. The algorithm is still controlled by China.
Now Republicans directly control X and Tiktok. I place the blame on their supporters, especially those who are engineers and others who are on Hackernews. The most frustrating aspect is they won't face any justice for their support.
This rant has some truth in it but it goes too far and comes off as unbalanced. From the conclusion:
> This was never about addressing privacy, propaganda, or national security. It was always about the U.S. stealing ownership of one of the most popular and successful short form video apps in history because companies like Facebook were too innovatively incompetent to dethrone them in the open market. Ultimately this bipartisan accomplishment not only makes everything worse, it demonstrates we’re absolutely no better than the countries we criticize.
I think when PAFACA passed and set up a ban of TikTok, it was in fact about privacy and propaganda and national security. It’s just that the Trump administration looks at every single situation as an opportunity for grift and corruption, and they abused the opportunity.
The deal does shift algorithmic control and moderation to US based entities. I am not sure what that means in reality. Maybe they can just say they’re in control but choose to use the existing system? Who knows. The terms of the deal look like they help with the original concerns on the face of it.
Taking the bait here: are you suggesting that the CPC has our (everyday Americans) best interests at heart more than a randomly-picked American company?
American companies just want to acquire all our money. China wants to convince us to withdraw from the rest of the world so they can take over everything they want.
I'm also a little "meh" on the "innovatively incompetent" bit.
People get tunnel-vision. Facebook is for "Facebook things", TikTok is for "TikTok things". Reels, stories, whatevers isn't "TikTok".
It's why Facebook bought Instagram. No matter if Facebook copied Instagram down to the pixel, it still wouldn't be Instagram. And it's why the branding has remained consistent.
Same thing with Google and YouTube.
It's why these acquisitions happen and why these companies become something else. Google to Alphabet, Facebook to Meta, etc.
This just forces the sale of TikTok to someone in the U.S.
> I think when PAFACA passed and set up a ban of TikTok
No, when it passed it was about covering up a genocide that we finance. Before that, when it failed, it was just your standard anti-China nastiness meant to give the hot property with the youth mindshare to local cronies who were amenable to total social media censorship in general, like what all of the other networks were meeting with the last administration weekly to do.
Now the property will be given to local cronies and primarily used to help cover up a genocide, sounds like exactly what people who supported this stupid bill of attainder were begging for. Partisans of the last administration just thought they'd be in power forever for some reason, and they could use it as an additional means to attack supporters of what became the current administration.
They all seem to be fighting for the minds of young people who hate them all. I think they're just going to start leaving the entire internet like a previous generation left facebook when it got taken over by their radical centrist fossil parents. The kids will have to get bored with TikTok eventually, unless their daily pharmaceutical cocktails have stunted their brain development. Especially with the deluge of AI.
The stated purpose of the law was to get TikTok out of the hands of a foreign adversary, and that was accomplished. Remember when Trump took office, and lots of people were worried he would refuse to enforce this law?
It sounds like the author would have preferred that a different group of billionaires take over.
It's very optimistic to assume that China was beaten here.
Bytedance still owns the algorithm and 30% of the new company. This new wrapper firm is just being granted the license to serve as Bytedance's operations, essentially. All the stuff about it being 'trained on US content' and 'overseen' by Oracle is smoke and mirrors. This is really just the zombie of the deal that was done four years[1] ago and then quietly scrubbed.
This isn't significantly different than the way TikTok has been operating all along, the only difference is a few of the administration's cronies are able to get their heads into the feeding trough.
From a libertarian perspective, I also thought this was a bad law. It totally abandons faith in the idea of free speech, and admits that China’s “great firewall” was the right idea. I think it’s better to document any lies that were being spread on TikTok, and counter them with truth.
If your first reaction is “but that won’t work!” then you don’t really believe in a free speech based society, and all that’s left to do is argue over which group of shadowy billionaires should get to control everyone.
> If your first reaction is “but that won’t work!” then you don’t really believe in a free speech based society
While I believe in free speech, free speech isn't some panacea. Nor does it magically exist without protection from powerful interests. What good does speaking up do, if "algorithms" managing the majority of speech have big money riding on promoting irresponsible speech at the expense of sidelining responsible speech.
This isn't a neutral open marketplace of ideas, battling on merit. It is a pervasively manipulated market for profit, and those who will pay to tilt it.
The right way to deal with surveillance and dossier based manipulation by external actors, is not to pick on one actor, but to make surveillance and dossier based manipulation illegal for all actors.
Nobody buys a TV wanting their watching habits to end up impacting what ads they see in web views, and vice versa.
That kind of behind the scenes coordination of unpermissioned data, as leverage against the sources of the data, is deeply anti-libertarian. Anti-liberty in both right and left formulations. (The idea that "libertarian" means the rich have a pass to do anything they can achieve with money, underhanded or not, is a corruption of any concept of individual liberty.)
The enshittification of the world is being driven by this hostile business model. Via permissionless (or permissioned by dark pattern) coordinated privacy violations. And it isn't just foreign adversaries who are benefiting at societies cost.
The constant collecting, collating, and converging of data on anyone doing anything that pervades the private/public economy now is deeply parasitical.
Free speech, like every other right, only achieves its real value in a healthy environment. I.e. a healthy idea competitive environment. I believe in voting too. But similarly, voting only matters in a healthy competitive candidate environment.
> The stated purpose of the law was to get TikTok out of the hands of a foreign adversary, and that was accomplished.
I don't know how we conclude that:
> The new U.S. operations of TikTok will have three “managing investors” that will collectively own 45 percent of the company: Oracle Corporation, Silver Lake, and MGX.
> the private equity firm Silver Lake (which has broad global investments in Chinese and Israeli hyper-surveillance)
> 30.1 percent will be “held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9 percent will be retained by ByteDance.”
Now we have oligarchs, plus a major surveillance investor group, plus the Chinese.
This doesn't seem to be a solution to anything except that "a deal was made", and any further attempts at cleaning up credible risks have so many players to deal with, they would be DOA.
China is outsmarting the current administration in every way, see here:
"From Chips to Security, China Is Getting Much of What It Wants From the U.S." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/world/asia/nvidia-china-t...
I mean the dude is a moron -- a dog could outwit him -- and yet somehow 50% thought this was a good idea.
There's an irony about the media (including the Times) screaming about Trump trying to fight China economically, and then the Times comes out with a piece about how China is getting everything they want from him?
Makes you wonder what side the Times is really on here.
All journalist organizations, unfortunately, have an incentive to bias content towards maximum clickbait. The ones that don't end up being outcompeted.
The Times is on the side of "reporting things that people say."
Can you be clearer about The Times screaming about Trump trying to fight China economically? What are you referring to specifically from them?
It seems pretty clear.
I don’t see how there is any cognitive dissonance there. Trump can simultaneously do disastrous things for our economy in terms of global trade with China as well as allow for us to be routed by Chinese strategists.
Not long into Trump's second term I read that senior Chinese officials were calling him Orange Santa. I hope it's true.
Christmas has been coming early for China ever since the invasion of Iraq.
There's considerable evidence and reason to believe Washington invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to supercharge opium production (banned by Taliban) and flood/destabilize the region (China, Iran) as part of a deliberate, covert and asymmetric drug proliferation strategy.
Now, you could argue that the subsequent invasion of Iraq was counterproductive to that, but I don't see that argument having water.
If that were true I wonder how much the emergence of fentanyl influenced the decision to pull out of Afghanistan
> There's considerable evidence
Yet you provide none.
This is a HN comment section. You can ask for which claims you want evidence for, instead of low quality trolling.
https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/6416/afghanistans-opium-p...
You said: “There's considerable evidence and reason to believe Washington invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to supercharge opium production”, yet you provide nothing to back up your claim. It is not trolling to point that out.
Your link to some stats on levels of poppy production does not support your conspiracy theory.
“Orange santa” in Chinese would be pretty unwieldy as a nickname. “橙黄圣诞老人” is 6 syllables.
But there has been a meme in China for ages that Trump is secretly a Chinese guy named “Chuan Jianguo” (Jianguo means “building the nation”) who was sent by China to destroy America from within.
There was a good tweet after election day where someone wrote that a Chinese classmate was talking about their religious father in Beijing, who thought that Trump was chosen by God to win the election -- but only as part of a larger divine plan to destroy America. Pretty funny, to be honest.
> I hope it's true.
Why?
It's funny and whatever they call him, it's still true that Trump has been wonderful for China.
They want America to fail to stick it to the Orange man
Stick it, because? Always ask why. Perhaps the orange man is shitting in gardens far and wide abroad? Personally I do not want America to fail at all, to flourish even, and for it to remain a democracy at that. It helps. The orange man seems to have differently opinion.
I’m pretty sure everyone who sees him for what he is has called him worse.
I think one of my biggest frustrations with tech right now is how credulous they are with regard to China vs USA arguments. I see it on HN regularly.
I am not saying the China shock was fake, or state surveillance is fine, or that they don’t exploit migrant workers, or that their currency manipulation and financial repression were/are good. I just think we should be skeptical that national security arguments are motivated by virtue, especially when “the good” is largely confined to what’s good for USA tech
Regardless of where you stand on American politics, it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions.
This is not a left versus right thing. China being unchallenged in the world will spell a quality of life decrease for us in the West. They are not “the good guys.” You’re free to see both parties as ‘neutral’ in alignment, but you still don’t want to have to be the losing party when they come into conflict. My point is China is not going to be sharing any of what they gain with Americans, even the ones who cheer for them - it’ll in fact be coming at your expense.
The CPC having a direct feed into the brains of every Gen Z and younger American is trivially easy to exploit - and there is a 0% chance that they won’t do so next year when they will likely invade Taiwan. If China is in control of TikTok, they’ll boost a ton of propaganda, supposedly people “from Taiwan” who greet the PLA as liberators, explaining how Taiwan being independent is actually oppression, and how they’ve always considered themselves part of the PRC, only evil politicians were keeping them apart. And they’ll make sure to suppress all media that exposes the violence on the ground. Finally, they’ll boost content urging Americans to protest US involvement and to sabotage the military, such as by chaining themselves to ships, etc.
Ryan McBeth has made a ton of videos laying out how this will work, and he does a better job than I have of explaining this.
TikTok is a cyberweapon.
>it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions.
In Gen Z's eyes, America is bad for Americans. That's what happens when you build a low trust society. America spent decades trying to build up a strong rapport among citizens and they tore it down and sold them out in a single generation.
Maybe china will be worse. But the appeals to nationalism simply will not work among our youth. We abandoned them, they will see the village burned to feel its warmth. Already happened in 2024.
Recognizing that our tech leaders are attempting to march us into a sort of technological feudalism is not an inherently gen Z take.
I guess my first question is: why would taking control of TikTok prevent bad faith state actors? X, for example, has a lot of issues with foreign accounts spreading propaganda. It seems more like a “moderation at scale” issue to me.
X and Meta do try to uncover and scrub malicious state actors, like the investigation of the 2016 Russia misinformation campaign. Maybe, they could have done more, but there is no reason why they wouldn't put an earnest effort as they have nothing to gain from faking compliance. A social media platform owned by a foreign adversary does have this incentive.
X of today is, quite obviously, not the same thing as the X of 2016.
Can't be taken seriously if you're going to elide that "detail".
X may be owned by a crazy Elon, but that doesn't change that X today still has no incentive to allow for malicious state actors, especially under government pressure. In fact, they recently exposed that a lot of extremist political accounts were based out of foreign countries.
It also of ingores the cases where state actors' and some wing of domestic politics have aligned interests (USSR & Communist parties in the early o mid 20th century, or Russia sponsoring/infiltrating rightwing countries in Western Europe & America in the 21st century)
I'd buy these arguments if America was a place that cared about its citizens and not a country that lets a small group of very elite, very rich, people ruin the lives of tens of millions of Americans subjecting them to poverty to make a buck.
The last war China was involved with was 1979 compared to America, today mind you, that is on the cusp of invading Venezuela because Rubio has a moronic axe to grind.
It's really hard to not see the facade for what it is: rich people are upset that their world order is collapsing.
Frankly who care? Give me universal medicare, universal childcare, and public higher education then maybe, just maybe, I might start to care about all this stuff that only seems to make people lives worse not better.
Not everyone here is American.
From a European standpoint: The ideal outcome is a stalemate between China and the US, with us as the kingmaker.
We could basically do the same thing as Yugoslavia did during the Cold War and play both sides against one another, extracting concessions from both.
> This is not a left versus right thing. China being unchallenged in the world will spell a quality of life decrease for us in the West.
America's incompetent leadership is self-inflicted. Biden's 2020 campaign strategy was pro status quo ante - which I find similar to your appeal to "normalcy". Unfortunately, this message did not resonate with voters in 2024. I suspect "getting back to normal" is not enough for Gens Y & Z, who have already lost a class war whose existence they may not be aware of.
The language of class war precludes any sort of repair of the situation. I see a ton of young people at work outside of my group within the org who should be getting paid better. When we're in management we have a responsibility to try to argue for narratives that lead to that outcome. And when we vote we need to remember that things that look bad for us homeowners like allowing big development companies to come in and raze all of our houses and build townhomes and apartments for rent might be necessary to keep the bad situation from getting worse. I think in the end what will save us is the big demographic crunch that's going to happen in the next 15 years, because there will be a lot of housing stock suddenly on the market with no buyers. We're all going to get an opportunity then to fix a lot of these problems. Or, if we do nothing and let the status quo reign, our kids will suddenly find themselves renting everything they use for the rest of their lives.
I think unless we acknowledge the class war, there is no way of winning it.
Big Capital is not my friend and its not most peoples friend, even if some of us here were lucky enough to be useful to them for now.
Still, it's like being on a plane and you're unhappy with the destination so you vote for a new pilot who has promised to immediately crash the plane into the ground.
Young people have legitimate gripes w/ housing and higher education. I would not describe this as having “lost a class war”.
I would describe the over-fiscalization of housing and education loans designed to increase profits for shareholders as different fronts in the same class war that young people have already lost.
> or state surveillance is fine, or that they don’t exploit migrant workers, or that their currency manipulation and financial repression were/are good.
can you clarify if you’re talking about China or the US?
Heh, good point. I would say the internal migration of Chinese Foxconn workers is a bit different from our situation. But there are parallels
Regardless of country, citizenship, "national security" arguments are always bad faith if pushed by the relevant "nation state"
I don’t know. In a way I don’t think it matters if China are currently actively engaged in altering the opinions of Americans, what matters is whether they can. And an unknowable algorithm absolutely gives them the power to.
IMO the bigger problem is that national security is only part of the problem. An unknowable algorithm controlled by the Ellisons is not necessarily less dangerous than one controlled by China, the motivations are just different.
Yes, and the counterfactual scenario (Ellison or anyone else) does not even preclude foreign manipulation. Other platforms demonstrate this daily
well one reason traditional media thrives is that it doesn't give infinite space to concern trolling the same way public forums do
They can do whatever they want with it with the sure knowledge that the users will never leave it. Tiktok is the digital equivalent of "getting kids addicted to heroin"
Completely anecdotally, I've seen Tiktok get replaced almost entirely by Instagram Reels in the sample space of, well, links to funny videos people send me. It doesn't count for much, but I do feel people might have slightly overestimated how much sticking power a platform like this has.
Actually I think there’s an important distinction there: the draw of TikTok isn’t people sending videos to you, it’s the algorithm that automatically suggests them to you. I’ve heard it describes as uncanny at matching your interests and Reels isn’t anywhere near it.
(I don’t use TikTok so I don’t know first hand!)
I’ve used both and I think that’s cope. There’s more younger creators and maybe more varied content on TikTok.
If you want proof, watch someone’s feed with them. Invariably they will start to apologize. Classic “he’s different when we’re alone” rationalization for an addictive substance
> Invariably they will start to apologize
This is my experience as well. I don't use the app, so my only direct experience is watching with someone scrolling their feed.
While TikTok is clearly still dominant, I don't think it has much of a moat.
If Insta and youtube shorts get enough traction, there's no reason creators won't simply post to each of them to maximize their reach. The legacy platforms are heavily courting/promoting short form video, why leave possible monetization on the table?
Hell, I'm too old for their demo, but I see TikTok videos posted to Reddit and even BlueSky.
That's generational.
They are both very similar obviously, but the social network on one isn't the same as the other.
I wonder if that's generational.
A lot of the people in my age group (Millennials) decided that TikTok was where we were going to get off the "hot new social media platform" train.
The Zoomers and GenAlpha kids seemed to be the people really using it, but I'm just a crotchety old guy with a bald head and a gut and an office job at this point, so I don't know what the hip young people are up to with their Tok Clocks and their loud rock music.
>Tiktok is the digital equivalent of "getting kids addicted to heroin"
I heard this argument about TV and videogames before
Was it false?
Yes!
Have you every heard a heroin addict comparing heroin to TV?
No but everyone has been or has known someone who rages when they lose access to their videogames, and everyone knows someone who has played videogames to the point that it is detrimental to their school or work obligations.
You can replace "videogames" with literally anything and it still works.
Sports, dance, family, etc.
Everybody knows too many people for an anecdote to make videogames and heroin the same. It's like pointing out some school shooter played a violent video games; so did the people they shot. You need to disprove the null hypothesis; not show that there exists evidence.
Right, seems like "dopamine sickness" (or whatever we want to call ADHD these days) is rampant in ways that were relatively easy to predict.
Not true, YouTube is the dominant player in short form content, and while TikTok has a loyal fanbase, I don't think it's a wall YouTube couldn't climb.
For those that are downvoting this based on vibes, please feel free to get recent view counts that prove me wrong.
Comparing views cross-platform is not a very useful study and YouTube routinely adjusts what a view means. Shorts changed earlier this year to count all playbacks and loops without a minimum watch time requirement. https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/333869549/a-change...
My relative runs a digital marketing company. The only platform they can reach 16-20 age bracket is via TikTok. Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for older people still work, but are fading.
YouTube Shorts is littered with reposted content from TikTok and Instagram, with a layer of AI slop on over it all. It seems overrun by people who don’t make content of their own, but were looking for a quick and easy payday.
YouTube keeps pushing it harder and harder. On the AppleTV, search often returns 90% Shorts, with no way to filter them out.
I think the main problem is a YouTube "customer" is there because they're looking for long form content, and someone looking for sort videos is probably already either a TikTok or Instagram user with no particular reason to switch.
Not downvoting you but such a broad statement is pretty meaningless if you don't segment by age group. Also Tiktok captures almost the same percentage of US ad video spending - that wouldn't be the case if youtube had so many more viewers that matter to advertisers.
YouTube is the dominant player in Western Fronts. TikTok is the dominant in Asian fronts.
TikTok is Chinese Youtube & YouTube is Western TikTok
Both are cancer.
Youtube Shorts, maybe, but Youtube is obviously broader than TikTok, and it is not just a dopamine machine, unlike TikTok. Can you find research seminars on TikTok?
TikTok has longer content, some of it quite academic, but it's all vertical. I don't know about any one else's TikTok, but mine has a dedicated STEM feed if I scroll all the way to the left at the top. The problem is their vaunted algorithm will prioritize whatever content you happen to come across and then linger on, which tends to end up not prioritizing eg math content until you reset your algorithm and search for content you want the fresh algorithm to prioritize.
> Youtube is obviously broader than TikTok
Well yeah, it's existed longer. You can't compare one service like YouTube, a streaming platform for video vs TikTok which is a viral social platform.
> Can you find research seminars on TikTok? TikTok isn't nor the platform for such. This link has results.
https://www.tiktok.com/tag/researchseminar
Did you check that link before you posted it?
Tiktok is not heroin. Tiktok does not make you vomit if you quit using it. Tiktok does not give you a 5 year life expectancy. You can't overdose on it and die. Tiktok does not make you rob a grandma to get your next fix of it.
I hate social media more than most people do, and I don't use tiktok and don't think anyone else should, but can we all please stop comparing a mobile phone app to using heroin? It's misinformed and dangerous to make rhetorical comparisons like that.
I empathize w/ your take. I've occasionally responded similarly to the thoughtless use of "cancer" in shallow analogies, as a survivor who's also watched it kill several people I dearly love. I don't have direct experience w/ heroin, but the film "Requiem For A Dream" was unforgettable and helps me better understand its evil.
Unfortunately, whether it's a deadly drug or a deadly disease, these casual references are unlikely to drop from public discourse anytime soon. And I personally would rather live in a world where insensitive or potentially-triggering language is gently discouraged, than one where the pendulum swings too far the other way towards censorship or radical left woke cancel culture. Words can be unintentionally callous without being "micro-aggressions". (And I say that as a liberal progressive.)
Thanks for posting in a personal and persuasive manner, instead of anger. Yours is the more effective approach anyway.
Only people with no actual life experience with drugs or drug users would make such an asinine and overtly hyperbolic statement as that.
Everyone knows Facebook/Meta is actually the heroin. A product intentionally designed to steal your life and enrich its owners. Duh
It's like how the Sackler's did everything they can to make opioids more addictive and increase profit margins, there is virtually no difference between this and Zuckerberg hiring psychologists to make his apps more addictive.
Even Safeway and Target are hiring psychologists! With programming as a career coming to an end, maybe I should go back to school.
You're right, heroin is merely physical addiction. TikTok is psychological, emotional and social crack for young malleable minds. Produced by the subjects of, and in cahoots with, an aggressive totalitarian regime that has about as much respect for human life as Oracle has for its customers.
Also assuming your heroin isn't tainted it isn't toxic and you can have a normal life expectancy.
Can we all stop pretending it's a not an issue?
Not comparing it to heroin (or crack) is not saying it isn't an issue.
Most of the toxic bullshit comes from America though.
China just wants us to buy cheap Chinese crap.
On HN, Social Media is heroin, Online Advertising is Rape, and writing software is presumably Genocide.
Metaphorically speaking, Tiktok is heroin.
>Tiktok does not give you a 5 year life expectancy
12 year old life expectancy then?
> The lawsuit, filed in the US claims that Isaac Kenevan, 13, Archie Battersbee, 12, Julian "Jools" Sweeney, 14, and Maia Walsh, 13, died while attempting the so-called "blackout challenge". Four children died because of, compared to one, who injects?
Heroin invokes addiction, TikTok does that. Heroin can cause physical dependency, TikTok brews this. Heroin is highly addictive, isn't TikTok to the young viewer?
I still hold my point that TikTok can be distilled and viewed as a form of Digital Heroin. Evidence shows.
How else do you describe it's nature?
Metaphorically everything can be anything
TikTok is in no way like heroin, stop using that false analogy
TikTok is a Skinner Box.
> TikTok is in no way like heroin, stop using that false analogy
How is it not a form of digital heroin when the effects are digital?
Heroin destroys your mind, And one could argue without moderation any other thing can do too.
If your own child had a choice between using tiktok and using heroin, and they had to choose one, which choice would you prefer them to make?
Two things can be bad. Rationalizing one due to being less lethal is an ignorant argument.
Depends, how rich are they in this hypothetical scenario?It's being poor that's the problem, and we know that's true because of the many rock stars who've lived with a heroin addiction for many many years.
If it's the first thing you think about when you wake up, and it kills you to sleep at night, and you think about it all day, sure, one's a highly addictive habit that destroys lives, and the other is heroin. Which is also a highly addictive habit that destroys lives. Funnily enough, one destroys lives because it's legal, and the other destroys lives because it's illegal. But if you're taking your phone to bed with you at night, and it's the first thing you check in the morning, before you even have a thought to yourself, okay, you're not injecting it with a needle under a freeway underpass but after you get fired for watching TikTok on the clock and can't pay your rent, is you're landlord gonna care when you don't pay rent whether you got fired for drugs or a smartphone addiction?
> How is it not a form of digital heroin
Because "digital heroin" is a nonsense phrase used as a thought-terminating cliché.
> when the side-effects are the same of?
Assuming that this is intended to be something like "when the side effects are the same as those of heroin?" then the premise is false; the effects (side or otherwise) of TikTok are not meaningfully similar to those of heroin.
bruh are we living in different realities?
some people feel like they are addicted to short form content but it’s really nothing like a drug addiction much less an addiction to something as devastating as heroin
TikTok (along with the other platforms) is more like cigarettes, or sugar.
It's highly addictive. The negative effects are somewhat diffuse and may take a while to really impact your life, but they're very real.
And, rather importantly, it's legal and widely available, and the industry behind them is suppressing evidence of their harms and making tons of money off of addiction.
I guess so. 36 and having seen the internet from IRC to how it is now arguing over some internet forum because views are different. How old are you?
TikTok causes chemical release in the brain and which can cause other self psychological damage. Heroin causes chemical release in the brain in the brain, and can cause other self psychological damage.
Both are addictions, both are hard to fight. Some find it easier some find it hard.
The effects of one are more devastating sure, Alcohol is more damaging than Caffeine; I'm not ruling that out.
However the effects of Heroin which comes with addiction and the cravings are some-what mimicked within the realms of TikTok.
To op below: I'm now rate limited, so I can't reply directly.
A drug, a real life substance that is designed to alter human chemistry. Cannabis, Caffine, MDMA, DMT all alter your brain chemistry organically.
You cannot compare one or to something that is man-made digital. You can however compare the effects of a substance that is organically designed to that of something is digital. The relation of effects of TikTok to Heroin are very similar.
Social media is being designed as a digital service to alter human chemistry. It works, why do you think the world is in utter shit? Why do you think social enterprises pay big bucks to exploit the human psyche by hiring sociologists/psychologists?
The TikTok icon on mobile devices is strategically designed to manipulate and trigger a response.
Facebook is a grand example with the A/B emotional testing they did with Cambridge Analytica which that is that is far worse then heroin IMO. At least with Heroin you need to inject.
> TikTok causes chemical release in the brain and can cause other self psychological damage.
You're literally describing any activity that someone enjoys generating natural dopamine, and then comparing it to a drug that crosses your blood-brain barrier and mimicks your brain's chemistry to give you a super-charged chemical version of that. The difference in dopamine levels is orders of magnitude. Your brain re-wires itself to handle the level of dopamine produced and you start only feeling normal if you're constantly using the drug. I would be surprised if Tiktok generated even 1/10th the dopamine level of using methamphetamine. It all honestly sounds quite fun, but my awareness of the consequences will prevent me from ever trying them.
Eating a good meal, having sex, finishing writing your first novel, winning a race, doing breath work, doing yoga, rock climbing, and an unlimited supply of examples generate dopamine in our brains the same way that Tiktok does. They can all ruin your life just as much, if you allow them to.
A much better comparison would be to describe Tiktok as a "digital slot machine", and indeed slot machine mechanics have been heavily studied by social media platforms to make usage more habitual. Nir Eyal's Hooked was an interesting and informative read on this topic. If he describes social media as heroin in the book I'll happily take the self-own.
Does anyone actually not realize this was to stymie criticism of Israel? You Netanyahu bragging about how this is central to winning the propaganda war. Ellison is the biggest private donor to the IDF. Put it together.
The deal itself feels messy and political, not like a serious solution to data or security concerns. In the end, the risks are still there, and it’s hard to see what regular users actually win from this.
The point of the whole Congressional exercise was to grab ownership of a highly lucrative social network on the cheap to the American investor class. Whoever won the presidential election got to choose the winners.
> it’s hard to see what regular users actually win from this
They won't. The entire point of this charade is to remind Americans we can't expect any better than instagram or youtube.
lol are you really suggesting that China, out of the goodness of their hearts, made TikTok with the objective to give Americans “better” trash social media sites?
No, of course not. They're simply more competent.
The TikTok deal seems to be more about empowering US corporations than anything else. It seems as if they hate all forms of competition under the orange man ruling the USA right now, so of course TikTok must be crushed (not that I use any of those antisocial media, it is just an observation made).
We see something similar in Europe in that Musk burps out the EU must disband after they fined his company for breaking local laws. It's like a really stupid variant of corporatocracy dominating the USA right now; at the least in the past it was a bit more subtle. Now it is like barbarian posing as oligarchs are having crazy fits. I think 99.9% of their wealth must be confiscated and given to The People - too much wealth makes the mind weak and leads them to act as tyrannical parasites.
I hate to tell you this, but that's how most countries operate. Actually, China is a shining example of digital protectionism. Turnabout is fair play.
I am still baffled, because wasn't there a bipartisan law passed banning TikTok? Is that just being ignored while a deal is orchestrated to sell it to Larry Ellison (and install Barron Trump on the TikTok Board of Directors)? The enforcement of the law is confusing to me here.
You're not wrong. It was very clearly illegal for TikTok to maintain operations in the US since the law started applying, and yet the US government ordered everyone to disregard the law and they just went along with it.
This is another sign of the US' decline. The refusal to follow inconvenient laws.
Technically, the law did allow the president to approve a one-time extension if there was a deal under negotiation. But every subsequent extension (I think we’re on number 3 or 4 now) had no legal basis in the text of the legislation and both Apple and Google are clearly in violation of the law for not banning it from their app stores after the 1st extension
> Is that just being ignored while a deal is orchestrated
Yes. There is a series of executive orders (eg [1]) that literally say "To permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed, the Attorney General shall not take any action on behalf of the United States to enforce the Act ...". The "PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS ACT" only allows the US AG to sue for enforcement, so this essentially is completely waiving enforcement.
This is why congress often gives independent agencies or private actors the right to sue in an act - because the DOJ cannot be trusted to fairly enforce laws if there is even the slightest political or economic valence to them.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/savi...
???
That's dumb.
I mean..
what about ..the slightest political or economic valence to..
um..
the Attorney General?
or even worse..
what about ..the slightest political or economic valence.. to ..independent agencies or private actors.
That's, like, explicit corruption isn't it? We'll give this private actor the exclusive right to enforce this law. (A law they themselves probably asked for?)
I hadn't realized that. That's insanity.
Quoting TFA: "It’s worth noting that none of this was really legal; the law technically stated that TikTok shouldn’t have been allowed to exist for much of this year. Everyone just looked the other way while Trump and his cronies repeatedly ignored deadlines and hammered away at the transfer."
They I understand it: There was a deal to ban TikTok unless ownership changes --- the original intention was no Chinese involvement, but now it seems "ownership change" means the ownership is amicable to the current president. There was also something of a grace period for when that ban went into effect if TikTok could show they were actively in the process of finding a new owner. The current president basically just kept insisting that grace period was in effect while he constructed a bid for ownership that aligned with his and his friends (business) interests.
Basically, Congress did not do its job and ignored the very law they voted for.
Congress can't really ignore a law though, anymore than I can.
Am I ignoring the TikTok law? No, because it's not my job to enforce it.
The executive branch is the one that ignores the law.
> Basically, Congress did not do its job and ignored the very law they voted for.
It feels like this is increasingly the case. Not sure what the solutions are.
> and install Barron Trump on the TikTok Board of Directors
Can cronyism become more blatant?
Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma?
That's the (obvious, I guess) comparison I was thinking of too, but IIRC correctly the issues there were 1) allegations of bribes (which ended up being false/that witness arrested by the FBI for lying about it) and 2) Biden improperly leveraging the State Dept (which was also found to be untrue by two different Republican Senate investigations).
Now if the issue was Hunter Biden being on the board at all -- even if independent of any Joe Biden dealmaking -- then I'm very curious how the Republicans sounding alarms back then react to the Barron Trump TikTok board seat now.
“Shittiest Possible Outcome” is basically the motto of the current administration.
> if these folks were all so concerned about U.S. consumer privacy, they should have passed a functional modern internet privacy law applying to all U.S. companies and their executives.
This is the way. I wonder if we'll ever see the day that consumers get a fighting chance.
Ah but it’s the best outcome for Israel so they can now suppress videos from Gaza.
lol, so 'We know this is crack cocaine mind-control spyware. Give us a seat in the control room'
Is there some provision that enabled the executive branch to keep extending the purchase deadline?
If not, the sale is illegal. Congress passed a law saying that TikTok was to be banned. Not "can be sold after a bunch of backroom deals by tech aristocracy that happens to be friends with an incredibly corrupt President", but banned. SCOTUS agreed that the law held up to scrutiny.
The law [1] does not work as an magic all encompassing "ban". It says operating and distributing the app is is unlawful, and the consequence is a huge fine and the enforcement mechanism is suit from the US AG. Nothing says that a sale after doing something unlawful is illegal.
The bigger issue is that the Trump directed the AG not to enforce the law. So something is plainly illegal but is de-facto legal because of executive pronouncement. That is extremely worrying because one aspect of totalitarianism is that the dicta of the ruler has effect of law.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815/...
Now it won't be Beijing having coercive access to your data
It'll be Larry Ellison, a slaver nation, and a PE surveillance focused firm having consensual access to your data! And the US government!
we did it guys!
“Your information” was never the important thing. That’s a sideshow. The important thing is that controlling an algorithmic feed that is wildly popular amongst multiple generations of Americans means the CPC can control American public opinion at the touch of a button. Literally no country would allow a sworn adversary to do that. Why do you think China doesn’t allow Facebook or Twitter? And those aren’t even government-controlled American companies (sure, they’re subject to coercion, but not to the extent Chinese companies are).
OK so now "Larry Ellison, a slaver nation, and a PE surveillance focused firm" can "can control American public opinion at the touch of a button"? That seems just as bad.
It is not access to our data that was the concern. It is manipulating the opinions of Americans by controlling the algorithms that determine what Americans see. How is that concern alleviated by this deal? It is not. And that's the problem with this deal. The algorithm is still controlled by China.
Now Republicans directly control X and Tiktok. I place the blame on their supporters, especially those who are engineers and others who are on Hackernews. The most frustrating aspect is they won't face any justice for their support.
Its a Trump deal. Everything the man touches turns to shit.
But inside that shit, tiny little gold nuggets
... that end up being like gold Christmas chocolate coins ... filled with shit.
(TL/DR: It's shit all the way down).
This rant has some truth in it but it goes too far and comes off as unbalanced. From the conclusion:
> This was never about addressing privacy, propaganda, or national security. It was always about the U.S. stealing ownership of one of the most popular and successful short form video apps in history because companies like Facebook were too innovatively incompetent to dethrone them in the open market. Ultimately this bipartisan accomplishment not only makes everything worse, it demonstrates we’re absolutely no better than the countries we criticize.
I think when PAFACA passed and set up a ban of TikTok, it was in fact about privacy and propaganda and national security. It’s just that the Trump administration looks at every single situation as an opportunity for grift and corruption, and they abused the opportunity.
The deal does shift algorithmic control and moderation to US based entities. I am not sure what that means in reality. Maybe they can just say they’re in control but choose to use the existing system? Who knows. The terms of the deal look like they help with the original concerns on the face of it.
Are they even stealing anything or are they buying the top?
>> This was never about addressing privacy, propaganda, or national security.
I disagree. I think was about making sure Americans see the "RIGHT" propaganda.
Taking the bait here: are you suggesting that the CPC has our (everyday Americans) best interests at heart more than a randomly-picked American company?
American companies just want to acquire all our money. China wants to convince us to withdraw from the rest of the world so they can take over everything they want.
I'm also a little "meh" on the "innovatively incompetent" bit.
People get tunnel-vision. Facebook is for "Facebook things", TikTok is for "TikTok things". Reels, stories, whatevers isn't "TikTok".
It's why Facebook bought Instagram. No matter if Facebook copied Instagram down to the pixel, it still wouldn't be Instagram. And it's why the branding has remained consistent.
Same thing with Google and YouTube.
It's why these acquisitions happen and why these companies become something else. Google to Alphabet, Facebook to Meta, etc.
This just forces the sale of TikTok to someone in the U.S.
> I think when PAFACA passed and set up a ban of TikTok
No, when it passed it was about covering up a genocide that we finance. Before that, when it failed, it was just your standard anti-China nastiness meant to give the hot property with the youth mindshare to local cronies who were amenable to total social media censorship in general, like what all of the other networks were meeting with the last administration weekly to do.
Now the property will be given to local cronies and primarily used to help cover up a genocide, sounds like exactly what people who supported this stupid bill of attainder were begging for. Partisans of the last administration just thought they'd be in power forever for some reason, and they could use it as an additional means to attack supporters of what became the current administration.
They all seem to be fighting for the minds of young people who hate them all. I think they're just going to start leaving the entire internet like a previous generation left facebook when it got taken over by their radical centrist fossil parents. The kids will have to get bored with TikTok eventually, unless their daily pharmaceutical cocktails have stunted their brain development. Especially with the deluge of AI.
Social Media is the digital equivalent of "getting kids addicted to heroin" reply
> This was never about addressing ... national security
You have no idea what you are talking about.
WAI. Goal of suppressing anti-Zionist/anti-Genocide posts was successful.
The stated purpose of the law was to get TikTok out of the hands of a foreign adversary, and that was accomplished. Remember when Trump took office, and lots of people were worried he would refuse to enforce this law?
It sounds like the author would have preferred that a different group of billionaires take over.
> and that was accomplished
It's very optimistic to assume that China was beaten here.
Bytedance still owns the algorithm and 30% of the new company. This new wrapper firm is just being granted the license to serve as Bytedance's operations, essentially. All the stuff about it being 'trained on US content' and 'overseen' by Oracle is smoke and mirrors. This is really just the zombie of the deal that was done four years[1] ago and then quietly scrubbed.
This isn't significantly different than the way TikTok has been operating all along, the only difference is a few of the administration's cronies are able to get their heads into the feeding trough.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/19/trump-says-he-has-approved-t...
I wish no one had taken over. The threat of TikTok is easy to understand right now. It’s going to be much more murky after this deal is complete.
From a libertarian perspective, I also thought this was a bad law. It totally abandons faith in the idea of free speech, and admits that China’s “great firewall” was the right idea. I think it’s better to document any lies that were being spread on TikTok, and counter them with truth.
If your first reaction is “but that won’t work!” then you don’t really believe in a free speech based society, and all that’s left to do is argue over which group of shadowy billionaires should get to control everyone.
> If your first reaction is “but that won’t work!” then you don’t really believe in a free speech based society
While I believe in free speech, free speech isn't some panacea. Nor does it magically exist without protection from powerful interests. What good does speaking up do, if "algorithms" managing the majority of speech have big money riding on promoting irresponsible speech at the expense of sidelining responsible speech.
This isn't a neutral open marketplace of ideas, battling on merit. It is a pervasively manipulated market for profit, and those who will pay to tilt it.
The right way to deal with surveillance and dossier based manipulation by external actors, is not to pick on one actor, but to make surveillance and dossier based manipulation illegal for all actors.
Nobody buys a TV wanting their watching habits to end up impacting what ads they see in web views, and vice versa.
That kind of behind the scenes coordination of unpermissioned data, as leverage against the sources of the data, is deeply anti-libertarian. Anti-liberty in both right and left formulations. (The idea that "libertarian" means the rich have a pass to do anything they can achieve with money, underhanded or not, is a corruption of any concept of individual liberty.)
The enshittification of the world is being driven by this hostile business model. Via permissionless (or permissioned by dark pattern) coordinated privacy violations. And it isn't just foreign adversaries who are benefiting at societies cost.
The constant collecting, collating, and converging of data on anyone doing anything that pervades the private/public economy now is deeply parasitical.
Free speech, like every other right, only achieves its real value in a healthy environment. I.e. a healthy idea competitive environment. I believe in voting too. But similarly, voting only matters in a healthy competitive candidate environment.
>and all that’s left to do is argue over which group of shadowy billionaires should get to control everyone
Whichever is better for the majority of people. This the same answer for democracy
> The stated purpose of the law was to get TikTok out of the hands of a foreign adversary, and that was accomplished.
I don't know how we conclude that:
> The new U.S. operations of TikTok will have three “managing investors” that will collectively own 45 percent of the company: Oracle Corporation, Silver Lake, and MGX.
> the private equity firm Silver Lake (which has broad global investments in Chinese and Israeli hyper-surveillance)
> 30.1 percent will be “held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9 percent will be retained by ByteDance.”
Now we have oligarchs, plus a major surveillance investor group, plus the Chinese.
This doesn't seem to be a solution to anything except that "a deal was made", and any further attempts at cleaning up credible risks have so many players to deal with, they would be DOA.