14 ms·

Walmart Joins Talks to Buy TikTok

99 points by vincentmarle 6y ago

varbhat 6y ago
Does "TikTok" here refer to worldwide or just USA only? I also didn't understand how USA forced TikTok to sell the company it owned.
- chomp 6y ago
  I believe it's the US-based operations, which includes USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The story of how the US can force them to sell is long, but it boils down to some powers granted to the President that allow the office to freeze assets of foreign people or groups if they're determined to be a threat to the American economy or national security. It's useful in that it allows the US to freeze assets for e.g. terrorist organizations, but also as we can see, can be abused somewhat.
  - throwaway122378 6y ago
    Abused? China is actively allowed to spread its all hearing and seeing app in the US while US social media companies are banned from operating in China.
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  Re the forced sale: I think USA is saying, unless TikTok (US operations) is owned by a US-company, it gets outright banned in the US. So TikTok the company needs to choose between the loss of revenue, and a buyout price (presumably affected by the sale under duress). Quite naughty policy, you could say, though probably insignificant compared to what China does to western companies.
  - echelon 6y ago
    > though probably insignificant compared to what China does to western companies. It's certainly not espionage. And we're not brain draining away top talent with above-market, state-funded pay (anticompetitive, but nice to the workers that get offers -- something maybe we should do). While we're not being nearly as imposing as China has with US companies, we need to be careful. Tesla, Starbucks, Apple, and a whole host of other American companies are making quite a lot of money in China. If we escalate, we might expect the same treatment. I think the safer play is to decentralize the supply chain by re-outsourcing to Vietnam, India, Mexico, and Africa in the near term, then re-onshore with automation in the long term. We should also try to duplicate the whole One Belt thing. It'd give us allies, influence, and hedge our risks.
- paulpauper 6y ago
  the deal was already in the works before Trump threatened to block it. The odds to Trump actually following through on this in the event of no sale, are extremely low. It may not even be Constitutionally enforceable.
  - parliament32 6y ago
    It's almost definitely not legal, but I suspect it will regardless get pulled from the app stores until a lengthy legal process goes through, which will kill the market anyway.
- alfalfasprout 6y ago
  Will probably be downvoted like crazy but it's insane that the US would allow TikTok to operate in the US when China doesn't allow most US apps to be used at all. If the Chinese want equal access to US markets they need to cooperate too.
  - xster 6y ago
    This keeps coming up but it's not factual https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tiktok-china-state-media-accuses-us-of-trying-to-steal-the-app https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tiktok-china-state-medi... According to Lee Kai-Fu who launched Google in China: "Chinese laws are clear about what foreign companies can do to operate in China. In TikTok's case, though, the company was left no choice but to consider a forced sale." China doesn't not allow western companies to operate. Google proactively made the choice to exit China (it also somewhat didn't. Google ads has a sizable market share in China as does Facebook). I'm not arguing that they should have elected to follow Chinese laws but the actions the Chinese government took with western companies was not to either tell them to stop existing in the Chinese market or abdicate their ownership to a domestic company. These were also the same laws domestic companies follow. Conversely, I don't see the executive actions being applied to TikTok applied uniformly to the US market.
    - alfalfasprout 6y ago
      Being complicit in censorship and outright disrespecting user's privacy isn't exactly what I mean.
    - mantap 6y ago
      How many western social networks can you name that work in China? Zuck literally asked Xi Jinping to name his child he wanted to be in China so much and he still got denied.
mmastrac 6y ago
The VCs and record labels must be madly trying to get their investment back out of this. They poured money into musical.ly, bytedance and others, then have been riding the wave up (and now down). In July they bought out at least one SPV for a crazy valuation to consolidate holdings, probably imagining that things would continue to rise. I think they'll be lucky to get 1/4 of the cash they spent on that back, though they've probably still 10X'd the cash they put in much earlier.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mythz 6y ago
  > The VCs and record labels must be madly trying to get their investment back out of this. TikTok are suing the US Administration so they're not forced to sell their US operations [1]. From what I can see TikTok have only had a recent 3B funding round on Softbank (after becoming popular at 75B valuation) and could only find 1x 100M funding round for musical.ly (at 500M valuation). Considering the expected sale price for the US part of their business is circa 50B, even SoftBank are likely to get many times return on their investment. Early investors must be due for an insane return. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-au/tiktok-files-lawsuit https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-au/tiktok-files-lawsuit
rich_sasha 6y ago
From the other thread: Why is suddenly everyone so keen to buy TikTok? And why such bizarre buyers - Microsoft, Oracle, now Walmart? None of these are companies I would associate with a social media presence. Their business is generally the "boring" - office application, data munging, groceries. Microsoft did buy LinkedIn and Skype, they don't seem in any way integrated in what it does (in fact, doesn't Microsoft undercut its own Skype app with Microsoft Teams?). And, this is opinion-based, but from a technical point of view, they seem very inferior to comparable non-Microsoft products (Zoom, Facebook etc.).
- benbristow 6y ago
  Microsoft own Xbox, MSN (MSN Games) and the Microsoft Store so at least they've a foot in the door when it comes to entertainment. Oracle/Walmart though? Doesn't make much sense... Especially Oracle.
- parliament32 6y ago
  >None of these are companies I would associate with a social media presence This is exactly why. They see TT as the "new" form of social media, since everyone is sick of FB-style feeds and profiles, and want a piece of the action. TT's growth and young userbase demonstrates pretty clearly that traditional social media isn't cool anymore.
  - rich_sasha 6y ago
    Maybe. The sort of 'I see cool kids have skateboards so I'll get one too'. But surely this is backwards. I guess when you are bidding against other people, the highest bidder wins. That means you have to, in a way, overpay for the product, and reap some special synergy bonus that other buyers can't get. This is what is missing to me, I can't see how owning a social media app enhances the rest of the business for either of Microsoft, Oracle, or indeed Walmart.
    - hakfoo 6y ago
      Optimistically, you could also be betting that everyone else is still underpricing the product. The problem with trying to buy a business like TikTok at its prime is that it's trying to buy "cool". It's the most perishable commodity imaginable. Let's assume that you manage to skate by the initial purchase process intact-- that the audience doesn't revolt en masse and say "I don't want to be associated with Walmart/Microsoft/Oracle". In a way, a unfamiliar foreign owner has a bit of mystique-- everyone in the target demographic has been in a Walmart or dealt with a Windows PC, so those brands have baggage already, whereas this was most people's first contact with ByteDance. A lot of the potential 'synergy bonus' opportunities have to be intentionally slow-walked to avoid setting off the audience's spider-sense. Push "buy goods via TikTok" too hard, or push the wrong ad inventory because it's all you have, and users will walk away.
paulpauper 6y ago
It is remarkable how big these companies have gotten over the past few years. Walmart is so big that it is extending beyond its retail business model and going after social media, of all things. It reminds me of the AOL Time Warner merger. Although unlike in 2000, I do not think that this portends to a market top, a bubble, or that it will be a disaster.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Amazon ?
  - sumtechguy 6y ago
    They already bought a platform like this, twitch.
- adventured 6y ago
  > It is remarkable how big these companies have gotten over the past few years. Walmart hasn't gotten much bigger in the past few years. They've lost position in terms of scale & power versus other large companies and Amazon has been taking a lot of retail market share. Walmart has also lost a big chunk of their profitability, their business has become less profitable (a business that was already operating on tiny margins). They've only been growing their sales a few percent per year the past five years. Their operating income is below where it was four years ago. On an inflation adjusted basis, Walmart is lucky if they've been standing still the past decade. Their peak was circa ~2000-2010. It's unlikely they'll ever exceed the position of dominance they held at that time. I'm not sure how Walmart - a $524 billion sales global juggernaut - eating a comparatively tiny social media company, reminds of the AOL Time Warner merger? The AOL merger was a merger of near-peers in terms of valuation, AOL at the time was booming and massively profitable. TikTok isn't profitable, and they're barely a rounding error compared to Walmart in sales. AOL was somewhat in the publishing & media platform business, they were both in the ad business, and both AOL and Time Warner were in the connectivity business. Walmart's business has nothing in common with TikTok, there's no sound synergy at all (even theoretical). About the only distant reach, would be the idea of trying to appeal to younger consumers, to use (abuse) TikTok for that purpose. It would of course end disastrously for WMT shareholders, Walmart would take a giant write-down eventually. There's nothing new about it of course. GM bought Hughes and EDS for example. Giant companies do this type of thing historically.
tibbydudeza 6y ago
MySpace V2.
boramalper 6y ago
TSLA should buy it. /s
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  SpaceX is the obviously better choice. Or even Elon just by himself! Ha, imagine the headlines that would give! Probably Boeing would jump in to compete. It's an insane world.
Firebrand 6y ago
From TheWrap: >But the proposed deal is being complicated by a split between ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming and General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, two U.S.-based ByteDance investors with long ties to the Trump administration and Republican causes who both would like to see the sale happen. They approached Ellison to buy TikTok and have reached out to the White House to close the deal, according to two individuals with knowledge of the matter. >However, Zhang is resisting any sale, the two individuals said, and did not inform his investors before suing the White House on Monday to block any sale. The insiders said Zhang is being advised by Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner, another early investor in Zhang’s company. Apparently Zhang thinks he can still save his company. Maybe the $45 billion will help change his mind. https://www.thewrap.com/oracle-nears-20-billion-tiktok-deal-with-white-house-support-exclusive/ https://www.thewrap.com/oracle-nears-20-billion-tiktok-deal-...
kaycebasques 6y ago
I'm going to use a political trigger word but please give this a moment to consider because I found it fascinating when someone suggested it to me. We hear a lot about the social/cultural aspects of fascism, but we don't talk as much about the economics of fascism. Think about all this talk about acquiring TikTok in the context of this definition: > Fascism is an economic system in which the government controls the private entities that own the factors of production… A central planning authority directs company leaders to work in the national interest. https://www.thebalance.com/fascism-definition-examples-pros-cons-4145419 https://www.thebalance.com/fascism-definition-examples-pros-...
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  "the government controls..." "A central planning authority directs..." But sometimes isn't it the other way around with Fascism? ie corporate or money interests have great influence over the government and influence it so as to increase the power of the corporate influencer? It seems more like with fascism it's hard to tell the difference between the government and the moneyed interests (be they corporations, companies, extremely wealthy individuals, etc.) because they're so intertwined.
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    It's certainly hard to tell with the current US administration, since the government and moneyed interests are the same: https://www.citizen.org/article/corporatecabinet/ https://www.citizen.org/article/corporatecabinet/ I do think the key here is that the government doesn't have to cave to moneyed interests, but a fascist leader does (either because they're weak, complicit or some other reason).
- voldacar 6y ago
  Thanks for the link, that's some really groundbreaking analysis. It even reminds me of this book 1984 by George Orwell
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 6y ago
wayanon 6y ago
Isn't all this a sign that TikTok is dead?
yalogin 6y ago
I don't understand why the ban on tiktok should be delayed for the acquisition talks. The ban is imposed allegedly because its sending the data of US citizen back to the CCP. Ok, that is still true today and so the ban should have been in effect immediately if that is the reason. This jerking around is not a good thing in a free capitalistic country like the US.
- adrr 6y ago
  CCP could just buy the data from databrokers including DMV data for you picture. All your data is up for sale including location data from you mobile device. Can’t stop foreign governments from getting sensitive data about US citizens unless privacy laws are enacted to prevent the sale of data.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/AkiPz https://archive.is/AkiPz
miguelmota 6y ago
I would start using TikTok if I were greeted by a Walmart door greeter when I open the app.
actuator 6y ago
Is Tiktok's userbase so loyal that they want to spend $50B on it, the app effectively has no moat. Why not just launch a competitor and pay content creators to post there, all of these companies(including other FAANG group as well) have deep pockets and engineering talent.
- xster 6y ago
  I think this is one good case of value from execution vs from idea. The idea's pretty dead simple but I think there are execution reasons why creators and viewers are on TikTok. The AI recommendations, video editing abilities and live AI filters are fairly unmatched. YouTube has all the reasons for me to spend more time on it than TikTok if its recommendations system doesn't keep thinking I want to become a plumber after watching one DIY video.
  - actuator 6y ago
    I am not sure how the kind of videos that do well on Tiktok will do on Youtube. Tiktok video seems to be the 10-30 second entertainment ones. Youtube by its very nature has a whole breadth of other content. Their recommendation can be certainly improved though.
    - xster 6y ago
      I'm not saying their contents are interchangeable. I'm just saying there are more diverse and deeper contents on YouTube and I should be spending more time on YouTube if the recommendation system's execution was more on point. i.e. I'm disagreeing with the GP that the app has no moat. The app idea is a simple one but the execution isn't that trivial to copy.
- nxc18 6y ago
  Yes, users on TikTok are loyal, at the very least creators are. I haven't heard of any creators, at least none that I follow, moving to Instagram's competing offering. I think there may also be a sense of broad injustice that makes people more loyal to the offering. The President's actions have laid bare the reality that this is just a smash and grab on behalf of US interests, and not based in any actual national security concern, painting him and the US government as dishonest and corrupt. There are claims we did similar things in the Middle East, interfering under false pretenses to get oil, and it turns out in 2020 that approach is unpopular to the general public, even if it is 'in the US interest'.
SeanFerree 6y ago
This makes no sense to me. It's just another way they can advertise since they are trying to take over the world
zelly 6y ago
Is the brand really that valuable? Because the app is not magical. With a few million dollars you could replicate it top to bottom. Couldn't the US government just ban it and help the new US-based competitor succeed? This is what China would do if the roles were reversed.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  No chance tik tok could be replicated with a few million dollars, just look at facebook's attempt. Tik Tok has very advanced ai behind it.
  - summitsummit 6y ago
    the ai definitely feels best of class right now
  - zelly 6y ago
    Eliminate TikTok from the US markets completely and watch how fast Facebook and others would rush to improve it. The reason they haven't is those efforts wouldn't be guaranteed to yield market share. That could change with a ban. Also training data comes from usage, so saying they have the best AI is the same as saying they're the market leader. That could change (artificially).
m3kw9 6y ago
On the other hand Netflix passed on the deal when approached.

99 points by vincentmarle 6y ago

Does "TikTok" here refer to worldwide or just USA only? I also didn't understand how USA forced TikTok to sell the company it owned.

chomp 6y ago
I believe it's the US-based operations, which includes USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The story of how the US can force them to sell is long, but it boils down to some powers granted to the President that allow the office to freeze assets of foreign people or groups if they're determined to be a threat to the American economy or national security. It's useful in that it allows the US to freeze assets for e.g. terrorist organizations, but also as we can see, can be abused somewhat.
- throwaway122378 6y ago
  Abused? China is actively allowed to spread its all hearing and seeing app in the US while US social media companies are banned from operating in China.
rich_sasha 6y ago
Re the forced sale: I think USA is saying, unless TikTok (US operations) is owned by a US-company, it gets outright banned in the US. So TikTok the company needs to choose between the loss of revenue, and a buyout price (presumably affected by the sale under duress). Quite naughty policy, you could say, though probably insignificant compared to what China does to western companies.
- echelon 6y ago
  > though probably insignificant compared to what China does to western companies. It's certainly not espionage. And we're not brain draining away top talent with above-market, state-funded pay (anticompetitive, but nice to the workers that get offers -- something maybe we should do). While we're not being nearly as imposing as China has with US companies, we need to be careful. Tesla, Starbucks, Apple, and a whole host of other American companies are making quite a lot of money in China. If we escalate, we might expect the same treatment. I think the safer play is to decentralize the supply chain by re-outsourcing to Vietnam, India, Mexico, and Africa in the near term, then re-onshore with automation in the long term. We should also try to duplicate the whole One Belt thing. It'd give us allies, influence, and hedge our risks.
paulpauper 6y ago
the deal was already in the works before Trump threatened to block it. The odds to Trump actually following through on this in the event of no sale, are extremely low. It may not even be Constitutionally enforceable.
- parliament32 6y ago
  It's almost definitely not legal, but I suspect it will regardless get pulled from the app stores until a lengthy legal process goes through, which will kill the market anyway.
alfalfasprout 6y ago
Will probably be downvoted like crazy but it's insane that the US would allow TikTok to operate in the US when China doesn't allow most US apps to be used at all. If the Chinese want equal access to US markets they need to cooperate too.
- xster 6y ago
  This keeps coming up but it's not factual https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tiktok-china-state-media-accuses-us-of-trying-to-steal-the-app https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tiktok-china-state-medi... According to Lee Kai-Fu who launched Google in China: "Chinese laws are clear about what foreign companies can do to operate in China. In TikTok's case, though, the company was left no choice but to consider a forced sale." China doesn't not allow western companies to operate. Google proactively made the choice to exit China (it also somewhat didn't. Google ads has a sizable market share in China as does Facebook). I'm not arguing that they should have elected to follow Chinese laws but the actions the Chinese government took with western companies was not to either tell them to stop existing in the Chinese market or abdicate their ownership to a domestic company. These were also the same laws domestic companies follow. Conversely, I don't see the executive actions being applied to TikTok applied uniformly to the US market.
  - alfalfasprout 6y ago
    Being complicit in censorship and outright disrespecting user's privacy isn't exactly what I mean.
  - mantap 6y ago
    How many western social networks can you name that work in China? Zuck literally asked Xi Jinping to name his child he wanted to be in China so much and he still got denied.

mmastrac 6y ago

The VCs and record labels must be madly trying to get their investment back out of this. They poured money into musical.ly, bytedance and others, then have been riding the wave up (and now down). In July they bought out at least one SPV for a crazy valuation to consolidate holdings, probably imagining that things would continue to rise. I think they'll be lucky to get 1/4 of the cash they spent on that back, though they've probably still 10X'd the cash they put in much earlier.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mythz 6y ago
> The VCs and record labels must be madly trying to get their investment back out of this. TikTok are suing the US Administration so they're not forced to sell their US operations [1]. From what I can see TikTok have only had a recent 3B funding round on Softbank (after becoming popular at 75B valuation) and could only find 1x 100M funding round for musical.ly (at 500M valuation). Considering the expected sale price for the US part of their business is circa 50B, even SoftBank are likely to get many times return on their investment. Early investors must be due for an insane return. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-au/tiktok-files-lawsuit https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-au/tiktok-files-lawsuit

rich_sasha 6y ago

From the other thread: Why is suddenly everyone so keen to buy TikTok? And why such bizarre buyers - Microsoft, Oracle, now Walmart? None of these are companies I would associate with a social media presence. Their business is generally the "boring" - office application, data munging, groceries. Microsoft did buy LinkedIn and Skype, they don't seem in any way integrated in what it does (in fact, doesn't Microsoft undercut its own Skype app with Microsoft Teams?). And, this is opinion-based, but from a technical point of view, they seem very inferior to comparable non-Microsoft products (Zoom, Facebook etc.).

benbristow 6y ago
Microsoft own Xbox, MSN (MSN Games) and the Microsoft Store so at least they've a foot in the door when it comes to entertainment. Oracle/Walmart though? Doesn't make much sense... Especially Oracle.
parliament32 6y ago
>None of these are companies I would associate with a social media presence This is exactly why. They see TT as the "new" form of social media, since everyone is sick of FB-style feeds and profiles, and want a piece of the action. TT's growth and young userbase demonstrates pretty clearly that traditional social media isn't cool anymore.
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  Maybe. The sort of 'I see cool kids have skateboards so I'll get one too'. But surely this is backwards. I guess when you are bidding against other people, the highest bidder wins. That means you have to, in a way, overpay for the product, and reap some special synergy bonus that other buyers can't get. This is what is missing to me, I can't see how owning a social media app enhances the rest of the business for either of Microsoft, Oracle, or indeed Walmart.
  - hakfoo 6y ago
    Optimistically, you could also be betting that everyone else is still underpricing the product. The problem with trying to buy a business like TikTok at its prime is that it's trying to buy "cool". It's the most perishable commodity imaginable. Let's assume that you manage to skate by the initial purchase process intact-- that the audience doesn't revolt en masse and say "I don't want to be associated with Walmart/Microsoft/Oracle". In a way, a unfamiliar foreign owner has a bit of mystique-- everyone in the target demographic has been in a Walmart or dealt with a Windows PC, so those brands have baggage already, whereas this was most people's first contact with ByteDance. A lot of the potential 'synergy bonus' opportunities have to be intentionally slow-walked to avoid setting off the audience's spider-sense. Push "buy goods via TikTok" too hard, or push the wrong ad inventory because it's all you have, and users will walk away.

paulpauper 6y ago

It is remarkable how big these companies have gotten over the past few years. Walmart is so big that it is extending beyond its retail business model and going after social media, of all things. It reminds me of the AOL Time Warner merger. Although unlike in 2000, I do not think that this portends to a market top, a bubble, or that it will be a disaster.

sjg007 6y ago
Amazon ?
- sumtechguy 6y ago
  They already bought a platform like this, twitch.
adventured 6y ago
> It is remarkable how big these companies have gotten over the past few years. Walmart hasn't gotten much bigger in the past few years. They've lost position in terms of scale & power versus other large companies and Amazon has been taking a lot of retail market share. Walmart has also lost a big chunk of their profitability, their business has become less profitable (a business that was already operating on tiny margins). They've only been growing their sales a few percent per year the past five years. Their operating income is below where it was four years ago. On an inflation adjusted basis, Walmart is lucky if they've been standing still the past decade. Their peak was circa ~2000-2010. It's unlikely they'll ever exceed the position of dominance they held at that time. I'm not sure how Walmart - a $524 billion sales global juggernaut - eating a comparatively tiny social media company, reminds of the AOL Time Warner merger? The AOL merger was a merger of near-peers in terms of valuation, AOL at the time was booming and massively profitable. TikTok isn't profitable, and they're barely a rounding error compared to Walmart in sales. AOL was somewhat in the publishing & media platform business, they were both in the ad business, and both AOL and Time Warner were in the connectivity business. Walmart's business has nothing in common with TikTok, there's no sound synergy at all (even theoretical). About the only distant reach, would be the idea of trying to appeal to younger consumers, to use (abuse) TikTok for that purpose. It would of course end disastrously for WMT shareholders, Walmart would take a giant write-down eventually. There's nothing new about it of course. GM bought Hughes and EDS for example. Giant companies do this type of thing historically.

tibbydudeza 6y ago

MySpace V2.

boramalper 6y ago

TSLA should buy it. /s

NotSammyHagar 6y ago
SpaceX is the obviously better choice. Or even Elon just by himself! Ha, imagine the headlines that would give! Probably Boeing would jump in to compete. It's an insane world.

Firebrand 6y ago

From TheWrap: >But the proposed deal is being complicated by a split between ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming and General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, two U.S.-based ByteDance investors with long ties to the Trump administration and Republican causes who both would like to see the sale happen. They approached Ellison to buy TikTok and have reached out to the White House to close the deal, according to two individuals with knowledge of the matter. >However, Zhang is resisting any sale, the two individuals said, and did not inform his investors before suing the White House on Monday to block any sale. The insiders said Zhang is being advised by Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner, another early investor in Zhang’s company. Apparently Zhang thinks he can still save his company. Maybe the $45 billion will help change his mind. https://www.thewrap.com/oracle-nears-20-billion-tiktok-deal-with-white-house-support-exclusive/ https://www.thewrap.com/oracle-nears-20-billion-tiktok-deal-...

kaycebasques 6y ago

I'm going to use a political trigger word but please give this a moment to consider because I found it fascinating when someone suggested it to me. We hear a lot about the social/cultural aspects of fascism, but we don't talk as much about the economics of fascism. Think about all this talk about acquiring TikTok in the context of this definition: > Fascism is an economic system in which the government controls the private entities that own the factors of production… A central planning authority directs company leaders to work in the national interest. https://www.thebalance.com/fascism-definition-examples-pros-cons-4145419 https://www.thebalance.com/fascism-definition-examples-pros-...

UncleOxidant 6y ago
"the government controls..." "A central planning authority directs..." But sometimes isn't it the other way around with Fascism? ie corporate or money interests have great influence over the government and influence it so as to increase the power of the corporate influencer? It seems more like with fascism it's hard to tell the difference between the government and the moneyed interests (be they corporations, companies, extremely wealthy individuals, etc.) because they're so intertwined.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  It's certainly hard to tell with the current US administration, since the government and moneyed interests are the same: https://www.citizen.org/article/corporatecabinet/ https://www.citizen.org/article/corporatecabinet/ I do think the key here is that the government doesn't have to cave to moneyed interests, but a fascist leader does (either because they're weak, complicit or some other reason).
voldacar 6y ago
Thanks for the link, that's some really groundbreaking analysis. It even reminds me of this book 1984 by George Orwell
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
6y ago

wayanon 6y ago

Isn't all this a sign that TikTok is dead?

yalogin 6y ago

I don't understand why the ban on tiktok should be delayed for the acquisition talks. The ban is imposed allegedly because its sending the data of US citizen back to the CCP. Ok, that is still true today and so the ban should have been in effect immediately if that is the reason. This jerking around is not a good thing in a free capitalistic country like the US.

adrr 6y ago
CCP could just buy the data from databrokers including DMV data for you picture. All your data is up for sale including location data from you mobile device. Can’t stop foreign governments from getting sensitive data about US citizens unless privacy laws are enacted to prevent the sale of data.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/AkiPz https://archive.is/AkiPz

miguelmota 6y ago

I would start using TikTok if I were greeted by a Walmart door greeter when I open the app.

actuator 6y ago

Is Tiktok's userbase so loyal that they want to spend $50B on it, the app effectively has no moat. Why not just launch a competitor and pay content creators to post there, all of these companies(including other FAANG group as well) have deep pockets and engineering talent.

xster 6y ago
I think this is one good case of value from execution vs from idea. The idea's pretty dead simple but I think there are execution reasons why creators and viewers are on TikTok. The AI recommendations, video editing abilities and live AI filters are fairly unmatched. YouTube has all the reasons for me to spend more time on it than TikTok if its recommendations system doesn't keep thinking I want to become a plumber after watching one DIY video.
- actuator 6y ago
  I am not sure how the kind of videos that do well on Tiktok will do on Youtube. Tiktok video seems to be the 10-30 second entertainment ones. Youtube by its very nature has a whole breadth of other content. Their recommendation can be certainly improved though.
  - xster 6y ago
    I'm not saying their contents are interchangeable. I'm just saying there are more diverse and deeper contents on YouTube and I should be spending more time on YouTube if the recommendation system's execution was more on point. i.e. I'm disagreeing with the GP that the app has no moat. The app idea is a simple one but the execution isn't that trivial to copy.
nxc18 6y ago
Yes, users on TikTok are loyal, at the very least creators are. I haven't heard of any creators, at least none that I follow, moving to Instagram's competing offering. I think there may also be a sense of broad injustice that makes people more loyal to the offering. The President's actions have laid bare the reality that this is just a smash and grab on behalf of US interests, and not based in any actual national security concern, painting him and the US government as dishonest and corrupt. There are claims we did similar things in the Middle East, interfering under false pretenses to get oil, and it turns out in 2020 that approach is unpopular to the general public, even if it is 'in the US interest'.

SeanFerree 6y ago

This makes no sense to me. It's just another way they can advertise since they are trying to take over the world

zelly 6y ago

Is the brand really that valuable? Because the app is not magical. With a few million dollars you could replicate it top to bottom. Couldn't the US government just ban it and help the new US-based competitor succeed? This is what China would do if the roles were reversed.

colinmhayes 6y ago
No chance tik tok could be replicated with a few million dollars, just look at facebook's attempt. Tik Tok has very advanced ai behind it.
- summitsummit 6y ago
  the ai definitely feels best of class right now
- zelly 6y ago
  Eliminate TikTok from the US markets completely and watch how fast Facebook and others would rush to improve it. The reason they haven't is those efforts wouldn't be guaranteed to yield market share. That could change with a ban. Also training data comes from usage, so saying they have the best AI is the same as saying they're the market leader. That could change (artificially).

m3kw9 6y ago

On the other hand Netflix passed on the deal when approached.