7 ms·

Tech Monopolies Are the Reason the US Now Has a TikTok Problem

85 points by ohmyblock 6y ago

ohmyblock 6y ago
I find very interesting the fact that Facebook had no problem crushing Vine while massively selling Tiktok ads in exchange for potential business in China.
- djohnston 6y ago
  is there a source confirming that that was the intention for their selling tiktok ads?
  - ohmyblock 6y ago
    Yes https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-china-focus/facebook-defies-china-headwinds-with-new-ad-sales-push-idUSKBN1Z616Q https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-china-focus/face...
- pjc50 6y ago
  Vine imploded under their own steam and were shut down by Twitter, and FB never had a directly competing product?
  - ohmyblock 6y ago
    https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-helped-thwart-vine/ https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-helped-thwart-v...
    - 40four 6y ago
      From the article: "Facebook didn't kill Vine alone. Leadership issues, increased competition, and monetization struggles all contributed." If an app like vine was as successful as it was made out to be, why would it's fate hinge on being able to access a contact list from another 3rd party app?
- balola 6y ago
  You probably don't know that Google and FB's ads businesses in China are kinda huge, they never left despite the ban, in fact you can still access a special version of Google Maps, their Analytics and Ads both are fine in China. Chinese apps, games and e-commerce have always been their customers. As for Tiktok, it was spending like crazy on big platforms at the time, and the product didn't seem popular back then, so why not take that sweet money as much as you can.
  - yomly 6y ago
    I remember about 1.5 years ago I think 90+% of my youtube ads were TikTok. I thought it was my user demographics as my youtube viewing habits probably skewed towards a low-ish age. But maybe Tiktok were just buying a lot of youtube ads. Probably both
    - balola 6y ago
      I was closely monitoring Twitter reactions to the product at the time, your are not alone, there were plenty of people puzzled by why they were seeing those weird ads everywhere and repeatedly.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Are you saying that Google et al should not sell advertising services to Chinese companies seeking an international audience?
  - baybal2 6y ago
    Yep, Google has a huge office in Foshan (in that hole out of all places..., probably the yet another "new district" deal has oiled the decision)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
loraa 6y ago
Meanwhile China bans US apps and services. So much TDS out there.
- echelon 6y ago
  > Meanwhile China bans US apps and services. So much TDS out there. I upvoted (vouched) for your post before googling what TDS meant, which was a mistake. You would have made a better point with your first sentence alone. Don't pick fights with people you disagree with. Try to build bridges and find common interests. Both parties right now are taking a critical view on China. This seems to be something you care about, so why not talk about it instead?
  - loraa 6y ago
    I forgot. Unless you are leaving out facts and blaming everything on Trump, the alt-left autists come out to downvote.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- uallo 6y ago
  OP might be referring to "Trump derangement syndrome": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_derangement_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_derangement_syndrome
x87678r 6y ago
What exactly is the problem? AFAICS its just a potential problem - there is a social media platform that is not controlled by an American company. Now you know how the rest of the world feels.
- jonathannat 6y ago
  it's a problem because TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is essentially owned by the CCP. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027 And CCP is forcing its own narratives out to the world, such as LGBT is illegal https://instinctmagazine.com/chinese-owned-tiktok-bans-lgbt-content-even-where-homosexuality-is-legal/ https://instinctmagazine.com/chinese-owned-tiktok-bans-lgbt-..., anything against the Chinese leadership is forbidden https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-..., https://www.opindia.com/2020/08/chinese-embasy-threat-nitin-a-gokhale-strat-news-global-xi-jinping-hitler-video/ https://www.opindia.com/2020/08/chinese-embasy-threat-nitin-... etc. Which is why US is pushing hard to ban such a device from a dictatorship so that the free countries have a chance https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-09/tiktok-is-the-superweapon-in-china-s-cultural-warfare https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-09/tiktok...
  - jonathannat 6y ago
    lol downmodded for linking to a ton of reference and stating mostly facts. such is the current state of hacker news where many nationalists are hopping over the great firewall to focus attack on countries that ironically have freedom of speech.
    - Bombthecat 6y ago
      Well, trump will be reelected such is life.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 6y ago
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Huh? I completely disagree with the premise of the article. I will start by saying that monopolies are bad and we could do away with them. That said, current actions have little to do with their legal and market position, but rather geopolitical place US is in today. There is a clear indication that US executive branch decided to go after China. And if history is an any kind of teacher, the rest of the government will eventually fall in line ( especially since it is hard to argue that China is a benevolent dictatorship ). US does not have a TikTok problem, because of tech monopolies. Monopolies just may end up benefiting from US foreign policy.
- adventured 6y ago
  > There is a clear indication that US executive branch decided to go after China. No. The US executive branch didn't decide that. The machine decided that, during the Obama Administration (not Obama's decision either), and they have been thinking about - plotting about - this confrontation as far back as the early 1990s at least. Four-star general Wesley Clark talked publicly about that the Pentagon has been expecting to have to confront China for ~25+ years. There are countless article you can dig up on this, through much of the Obama Administration years. Here is a good one: FAS (Federation of American Scientists) 2012: "Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration’s “Rebalancing” Toward Asia" https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf "In the fall of 2011, the Obama Administration issued a series of announcements indicating that the United States would be expanding and intensifying its already significant role in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in the southern part of the region. The fundamental goal underpinning the shift is to devote more effort to influencing the development of the Asia-Pacific’s norms and rules, particularly as China emerges as an ever-more influential regional power." Pivot aka confront China. Read the section called "Areas of Continuity" where they discuss how Obama's pivot was actually just furthering policies began during the prior Bush Administration. It's a system in action, spanning administrations. They're doing it in a gradual multi-part rotation. They called it the "pivot to Asia" during the Obama years. That pivot was about dealing with the rising China. Each cycle gets more aggressive and with more resources devoted toward it. With Trump it's called the confrontation with China. They're escalating as they go. The media, as part of the machine, also does its propaganda part as they get their marching orders in part from the military industrial complex: during the Obama years the media called the strategy the pivot to Asia; during the Trump years, they like to use "confrontation" in their news titles; they're providing the cultural atmosphere for what the machine is trying to steer us toward. The machine, as I'm half-jokingly calling it, is the system of government and power that exists administration to administration and sets continuity policy. It includes structures of power like the Pentagon. That's how the Cold War was operated for example, they didn't entirely flip flop every administration with how the USSR was broadly handled. Most of the government continues from one administration to the next. There are occasionally large, animating ideas that propel the US superpower into action, challenging the USSR was one of those, and China today is another. Nearly the whole of the US system has recognized it can't co-exist with China as previously hoped, most of those pieces that make up the multi-headed power of the US are in agreement to confront China now, spanning from the FBI to the intel community to the US military to the executive branch to almost all of Congress (mostly only varying by degree now).
luckylion 6y ago
> But their history shows tech giants are structurally unable to defend American interests and should never be trusted with that task. That sounds suspiciously like the tech giants are private enterprises in name (and profit) only, and are essentially part of the state, tasked with advancing the country's/state's interests on the digital front. It's rarely explicitly laid out by a proponent (who's just disappointed that it allegedly didn't work). It's usually marxists criticizing it as stamocap while everyone else says that it's completely baseless, private enterprises etc etc.

85 points by ohmyblock 6y ago

I find very interesting the fact that Facebook had no problem crushing Vine while massively selling Tiktok ads in exchange for potential business in China.

djohnston 6y ago
is there a source confirming that that was the intention for their selling tiktok ads?
- ohmyblock 6y ago
  Yes https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-china-focus/facebook-defies-china-headwinds-with-new-ad-sales-push-idUSKBN1Z616Q https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-china-focus/face...
pjc50 6y ago
Vine imploded under their own steam and were shut down by Twitter, and FB never had a directly competing product?
- ohmyblock 6y ago
  https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-helped-thwart-vine/ https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-helped-thwart-v...
  - 40four 6y ago
    From the article: "Facebook didn't kill Vine alone. Leadership issues, increased competition, and monetization struggles all contributed." If an app like vine was as successful as it was made out to be, why would it's fate hinge on being able to access a contact list from another 3rd party app?
balola 6y ago
You probably don't know that Google and FB's ads businesses in China are kinda huge, they never left despite the ban, in fact you can still access a special version of Google Maps, their Analytics and Ads both are fine in China. Chinese apps, games and e-commerce have always been their customers. As for Tiktok, it was spending like crazy on big platforms at the time, and the product didn't seem popular back then, so why not take that sweet money as much as you can.
- yomly 6y ago
  I remember about 1.5 years ago I think 90+% of my youtube ads were TikTok. I thought it was my user demographics as my youtube viewing habits probably skewed towards a low-ish age. But maybe Tiktok were just buying a lot of youtube ads. Probably both
  - balola 6y ago
    I was closely monitoring Twitter reactions to the product at the time, your are not alone, there were plenty of people puzzled by why they were seeing those weird ads everywhere and repeatedly.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Are you saying that Google et al should not sell advertising services to Chinese companies seeking an international audience?
- baybal2 6y ago
  Yep, Google has a huge office in Foshan (in that hole out of all places..., probably the yet another "new district" deal has oiled the decision)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

loraa 6y ago

Meanwhile China bans US apps and services. So much TDS out there.

echelon 6y ago
> Meanwhile China bans US apps and services. So much TDS out there. I upvoted (vouched) for your post before googling what TDS meant, which was a mistake. You would have made a better point with your first sentence alone. Don't pick fights with people you disagree with. Try to build bridges and find common interests. Both parties right now are taking a critical view on China. This seems to be something you care about, so why not talk about it instead?
- loraa 6y ago
  I forgot. Unless you are leaving out facts and blaming everything on Trump, the alt-left autists come out to downvote.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
uallo 6y ago
OP might be referring to "Trump derangement syndrome": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_derangement_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_derangement_syndrome

x87678r 6y ago

What exactly is the problem? AFAICS its just a potential problem - there is a social media platform that is not controlled by an American company. Now you know how the rest of the world feels.

jonathannat 6y ago
it's a problem because TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is essentially owned by the CCP. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027 And CCP is forcing its own narratives out to the world, such as LGBT is illegal https://instinctmagazine.com/chinese-owned-tiktok-bans-lgbt-content-even-where-homosexuality-is-legal/ https://instinctmagazine.com/chinese-owned-tiktok-bans-lgbt-..., anything against the Chinese leadership is forbidden https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-..., https://www.opindia.com/2020/08/chinese-embasy-threat-nitin-a-gokhale-strat-news-global-xi-jinping-hitler-video/ https://www.opindia.com/2020/08/chinese-embasy-threat-nitin-... etc. Which is why US is pushing hard to ban such a device from a dictatorship so that the free countries have a chance https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-09/tiktok-is-the-superweapon-in-china-s-cultural-warfare https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-09/tiktok...
- jonathannat 6y ago
  lol downmodded for linking to a ton of reference and stating mostly facts. such is the current state of hacker news where many nationalists are hopping over the great firewall to focus attack on countries that ironically have freedom of speech.
  - Bombthecat 6y ago
    Well, trump will be reelected such is life.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 6y ago

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

Huh? I completely disagree with the premise of the article. I will start by saying that monopolies are bad and we could do away with them. That said, current actions have little to do with their legal and market position, but rather geopolitical place US is in today. There is a clear indication that US executive branch decided to go after China. And if history is an any kind of teacher, the rest of the government will eventually fall in line ( especially since it is hard to argue that China is a benevolent dictatorship ). US does not have a TikTok problem, because of tech monopolies. Monopolies just may end up benefiting from US foreign policy.

adventured 6y ago
> There is a clear indication that US executive branch decided to go after China. No. The US executive branch didn't decide that. The machine decided that, during the Obama Administration (not Obama's decision either), and they have been thinking about - plotting about - this confrontation as far back as the early 1990s at least. Four-star general Wesley Clark talked publicly about that the Pentagon has been expecting to have to confront China for ~25+ years. There are countless article you can dig up on this, through much of the Obama Administration years. Here is a good one: FAS (Federation of American Scientists) 2012: "Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration’s “Rebalancing” Toward Asia" https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf "In the fall of 2011, the Obama Administration issued a series of announcements indicating that the United States would be expanding and intensifying its already significant role in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in the southern part of the region. The fundamental goal underpinning the shift is to devote more effort to influencing the development of the Asia-Pacific’s norms and rules, particularly as China emerges as an ever-more influential regional power." Pivot aka confront China. Read the section called "Areas of Continuity" where they discuss how Obama's pivot was actually just furthering policies began during the prior Bush Administration. It's a system in action, spanning administrations. They're doing it in a gradual multi-part rotation. They called it the "pivot to Asia" during the Obama years. That pivot was about dealing with the rising China. Each cycle gets more aggressive and with more resources devoted toward it. With Trump it's called the confrontation with China. They're escalating as they go. The media, as part of the machine, also does its propaganda part as they get their marching orders in part from the military industrial complex: during the Obama years the media called the strategy the pivot to Asia; during the Trump years, they like to use "confrontation" in their news titles; they're providing the cultural atmosphere for what the machine is trying to steer us toward. The machine, as I'm half-jokingly calling it, is the system of government and power that exists administration to administration and sets continuity policy. It includes structures of power like the Pentagon. That's how the Cold War was operated for example, they didn't entirely flip flop every administration with how the USSR was broadly handled. Most of the government continues from one administration to the next. There are occasionally large, animating ideas that propel the US superpower into action, challenging the USSR was one of those, and China today is another. Nearly the whole of the US system has recognized it can't co-exist with China as previously hoped, most of those pieces that make up the multi-headed power of the US are in agreement to confront China now, spanning from the FBI to the intel community to the US military to the executive branch to almost all of Congress (mostly only varying by degree now).

luckylion 6y ago

> But their history shows tech giants are structurally unable to defend American interests and should never be trusted with that task. That sounds suspiciously like the tech giants are private enterprises in name (and profit) only, and are essentially part of the state, tasked with advancing the country's/state's interests on the digital front. It's rarely explicitly laid out by a proponent (who's just disappointed that it allegedly didn't work). It's usually marxists criticizing it as stamocap while everyone else says that it's completely baseless, private enterprises etc etc.