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Trump Says He’s Approved Oracle Deal for U.S. TikTok Operations

20 points by bigpumpkin 6y ago

cma 6y ago
Isn't Ellison a big financial supporter of Trump's campaign?
- mindslight 6y ago
  Yup. It's pure nepotism and fealty, including the requirement to pay a tribute that can be held up by the "leader" in his own honor, similar to the museums in North Korea where they show off gifts from foreign countries.
rapferreira 6y ago
I was really elated to hear TikTok was going to be banned. It is honestly terrible for culture...
- peteypao 6y ago
  Please elaborate. What's wrong with a few dancing videos? Honest question.
  - DLay 6y ago
    It’s comments and the duets. Little kids on TikTok are much more vicious than Twitter users. And they are little kids. Tiktok does a decent job with facial recognition to suppress their videos but that doesn’t stop a mass horde of them from stumbling on a couple of videos of mine and turning it into a cesspool. Now of course that’s not worth the eradication of the app, but it’s not very inspiring to see the next generation being encouraged to act in the worst ways of online discourse.
    - xvector 6y ago
      As someone that grew up playing with other kids on the net, kids have always been vicious unempathetic little shits.
  - pubutil 6y ago
    I want to think they’re referring more to the culture of doing things you wouldn’t normally do in order to gain popularity. Like that one girl who drank a ton of Benadryl. The problem is that those people exist on every social media platform, not just TikTok.
    - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
      And attention seeking clowns used to around before the Internet. I used to be one.
- cripblip 6y ago
  Starts with dance videos, Figures our your preferences pretty quickly and I have found it very educational, the short format really cuts to the chase, It has prompted me to learn new techniques in cooking, woodwork, stretching... positive overall!
  - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
    I agree, it seems benign besides the surveillance.
    - cripblip 6y ago
      Could you expand on this? Does the app have more surveillance/data gathering than other? Genuinely curious, feeling naive
      - xvector 6y ago
        It does not. Spreading conspiracy is exciting and makes people feel smart. If you use Frida to bypass cert pinning and see what’s sent, TikTok doesn’t collect anything of note in the realm of social media. Google (and the NSA by extension, via PRISM) has magnitudes more information on you.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    If you're after than kind of content, you may like https://watchnebula.com/ https://watchnebula.com/ - pretty much curated educational YouTube. Tiny cost and no ads.
neom 6y ago
"Trump said the new company will be hiring at least 25,000 people and making a $5 billion contribution to a fund dedicated to education for Americans. “That’s their contribution that I’ve been asking for,” he said." - https://www.fox5ny.com/news/trump-gives-blessing-to-proposed-tiktok-deal-with-oracle-walmart https://www.fox5ny.com/news/trump-gives-blessing-to-proposed...
- vertbhrtn 6y ago
  I suppose the "Education fund" is indirectly owned by Trump?
hienyimba 6y ago
- 25,000 jobs. - $5billion Educational fund. - 20% ownership by Oracle and Walmart. - Access to codebase by Oracle. - Opportunity for Oracle and Walmart to increase stake by further 20% pre-IPO. - New HQ in Texas, US. I know that people in the US likes to criticize Trump a lot but he sure has his merits and this is one of them.
- xvector 6y ago
  Merits including forcibly nationalizing foreign IP under vague “national security” concerns? Today it’s TikTok, tomorrow it will be Telegram.
mortdeus 6y ago
Honestly, I personally think that this is a pretty impressive strategic move on Trump's part. I mean considering the strong precedence it sets for future Chinese web app developers who intend to market their products internationally. I also think it's important to note that this is us just leveling the playing field in the sense that when we try to market our products there, we have to essentially do the same thing and build a special version just for them that the CCP can monitor and censor at will. With Oracle being in charge of all the backend operations in the US and being a 10% shareholder I can feel confident that they will ensure that the CCP won't have the ability to just pick up a phone and gain access to all of our WeChat information. But with all that being said, I still have a problem with the idea of any Government having the ability to access our private conversations willy, nilly and without any real oversight over the NSA to ensure their investigations are legit and not spying for profit. That's why we need to start demanding that end to end encryption becomes an option we can at least pay for the option to use on all of the major social apps we use like FB, Twitter, etc. Idk, at first I thought Trump was probably overstepping his "conservative" position by trying to step in and regulate the free market in a way where he is now "picking winners and losers", rather than letting the consumers being the ones who get to make this decision (which is something I passionately believe Government should never empower itself to do). But then after looking into the situation a little deeper, I saw that they actually have two seperate versions of TikTok. One called Douyin which is specifically for Chinese users and then TikTok which is for everybody else. After realizing that they were already operating from a walled off garden that keeps their people seperated from us and vice versa, I started to see very little point in having both apps operate from China.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I don't think it's a great strategic move. It is the US government saying people can't use a tool that facilitates expression of our 1st amendment rights because of how the tool's owner uses & shares data. Objections to how data is used can be solved by law, with needing to do it by fiat of the Executive Branch. If we don't like how data is going to be used, make laws the dictate the desired restrictions. Then use the rule of law, not the rule of man. Formal legal processes, not vague appeals to national security, would guide any determination on breaches of those laws & appropriate escalating penalties. It would also have the benefit of not escalating a user data issue into a major geo-political incident.

20 points by bigpumpkin 6y ago

cma 6y ago

Isn't Ellison a big financial supporter of Trump's campaign?

mindslight 6y ago
Yup. It's pure nepotism and fealty, including the requirement to pay a tribute that can be held up by the "leader" in his own honor, similar to the museums in North Korea where they show off gifts from foreign countries.

rapferreira 6y ago

I was really elated to hear TikTok was going to be banned. It is honestly terrible for culture...

peteypao 6y ago
Please elaborate. What's wrong with a few dancing videos? Honest question.
- DLay 6y ago
  It’s comments and the duets. Little kids on TikTok are much more vicious than Twitter users. And they are little kids. Tiktok does a decent job with facial recognition to suppress their videos but that doesn’t stop a mass horde of them from stumbling on a couple of videos of mine and turning it into a cesspool. Now of course that’s not worth the eradication of the app, but it’s not very inspiring to see the next generation being encouraged to act in the worst ways of online discourse.
  - xvector 6y ago
    As someone that grew up playing with other kids on the net, kids have always been vicious unempathetic little shits.
- pubutil 6y ago
  I want to think they’re referring more to the culture of doing things you wouldn’t normally do in order to gain popularity. Like that one girl who drank a ton of Benadryl. The problem is that those people exist on every social media platform, not just TikTok.
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    And attention seeking clowns used to around before the Internet. I used to be one.
cripblip 6y ago
Starts with dance videos, Figures our your preferences pretty quickly and I have found it very educational, the short format really cuts to the chase, It has prompted me to learn new techniques in cooking, woodwork, stretching... positive overall!
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  I agree, it seems benign besides the surveillance.
  - cripblip 6y ago
    Could you expand on this? Does the app have more surveillance/data gathering than other? Genuinely curious, feeling naive
    - xvector 6y ago
      It does not. Spreading conspiracy is exciting and makes people feel smart. If you use Frida to bypass cert pinning and see what’s sent, TikTok doesn’t collect anything of note in the realm of social media. Google (and the NSA by extension, via PRISM) has magnitudes more information on you.
- viraptor 6y ago
  If you're after than kind of content, you may like https://watchnebula.com/ https://watchnebula.com/ - pretty much curated educational YouTube. Tiny cost and no ads.

neom 6y ago

"Trump said the new company will be hiring at least 25,000 people and making a $5 billion contribution to a fund dedicated to education for Americans. “That’s their contribution that I’ve been asking for,” he said." - https://www.fox5ny.com/news/trump-gives-blessing-to-proposed-tiktok-deal-with-oracle-walmart https://www.fox5ny.com/news/trump-gives-blessing-to-proposed...

vertbhrtn 6y ago
I suppose the "Education fund" is indirectly owned by Trump?

hienyimba 6y ago

- 25,000 jobs. - $5billion Educational fund. - 20% ownership by Oracle and Walmart. - Access to codebase by Oracle. - Opportunity for Oracle and Walmart to increase stake by further 20% pre-IPO. - New HQ in Texas, US. I know that people in the US likes to criticize Trump a lot but he sure has his merits and this is one of them.

xvector 6y ago
Merits including forcibly nationalizing foreign IP under vague “national security” concerns? Today it’s TikTok, tomorrow it will be Telegram.

mortdeus 6y ago

Honestly, I personally think that this is a pretty impressive strategic move on Trump's part. I mean considering the strong precedence it sets for future Chinese web app developers who intend to market their products internationally. I also think it's important to note that this is us just leveling the playing field in the sense that when we try to market our products there, we have to essentially do the same thing and build a special version just for them that the CCP can monitor and censor at will. With Oracle being in charge of all the backend operations in the US and being a 10% shareholder I can feel confident that they will ensure that the CCP won't have the ability to just pick up a phone and gain access to all of our WeChat information. But with all that being said, I still have a problem with the idea of any Government having the ability to access our private conversations willy, nilly and without any real oversight over the NSA to ensure their investigations are legit and not spying for profit. That's why we need to start demanding that end to end encryption becomes an option we can at least pay for the option to use on all of the major social apps we use like FB, Twitter, etc. Idk, at first I thought Trump was probably overstepping his "conservative" position by trying to step in and regulate the free market in a way where he is now "picking winners and losers", rather than letting the consumers being the ones who get to make this decision (which is something I passionately believe Government should never empower itself to do). But then after looking into the situation a little deeper, I saw that they actually have two seperate versions of TikTok. One called Douyin which is specifically for Chinese users and then TikTok which is for everybody else. After realizing that they were already operating from a walled off garden that keeps their people seperated from us and vice versa, I started to see very little point in having both apps operate from China.

ineedasername 6y ago
I don't think it's a great strategic move. It is the US government saying people can't use a tool that facilitates expression of our 1st amendment rights because of how the tool's owner uses & shares data. Objections to how data is used can be solved by law, with needing to do it by fiat of the Executive Branch. If we don't like how data is going to be used, make laws the dictate the desired restrictions. Then use the rule of law, not the rule of man. Formal legal processes, not vague appeals to national security, would guide any determination on breaches of those laws & appropriate escalating penalties. It would also have the benefit of not escalating a user data issue into a major geo-political incident.