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That's a lot of confidence, you must know something I don't. I'm but a bystander Canadian without much of a dog in this race, but it's a pretty serious allegati
by joenot443 2y ago
That's a lot of confidence, you must know something I don't. I'm but a bystander Canadian without much of a dog in this race, but it's a pretty serious allegation to suggest that tomorrow's World's Most Powerful Man is on the ByteDance/TikTok payroll.
Are you able to expand a bit?
- namaria 2y agoYou wanna play coy about the guy who shot beans commercials in the oval office?
- joenot443 2y agoI think on HN it's easier to just be clear about what we're positing; I'm not really sure what you mean by playing coy. Do you think Trump's being paid by ByteDance to lift the ban?
- choult 2y agoTrump has displayed a disturbing pattern of changing his opinions and actions after meeting with monied or powerful people who have vested interest in said change. Often this is accompanied by a public message of flattery or a donation to his "political" coffers.
- joenot443 2y agoTotally agree on that, public flattery's a very common tribute in international politics. So I'll ask again, are we of the opinion that Trump is being paid by actors, foreign or domestic, to enact change here?
- zelda420 2y agoI do believe that. We are talking about the admin that launched Trumpcoin which soared to tens of billions in market cap in the last few days.
- rbanffy 2y agoSo, just to make it very clear what I implied, yes. I believe he and his organisations receive benefits, directly or not, in money or other forms, for him steering policy towards what’s convenient to whoever is paying. An easy way is for TikTok to just promise to algorithm away any criticism of him in the US.
- hiccuphippo 2y agoLike every other politician. Trump is just less subtle about it. Politicians take political decisions, not logical ones.
- magpi3 2y ago> Do you think Trump's being paid by ByteDance to lift the ban? There is never a need to be that direct. Republican and Democrat donors tell politicians what positions to take. Trump doesn't need to take money directly from a company. He takes it from his donors, who in turn take it from the company in some form. In this case, the theory is that billionaire Jeff Yass (an investor in Tik Tok) has "persuaded" Trump to flip his position. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/jeff-yass-billionaire-donor-investments-tiktoks-parent-company-rcna142531 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/jeff-yass-billionaire...
- joenot443 2y agorbanffy's comment was exactly as direct as I specified, and I'll reiterate their comment for posterity - "I’m sure they expect the issue to be resolved by paying the incoming president". My understanding now is that now we've shifted from "ByteDance pays Trump to flip" to "American businessman Jeff Yass meets with Trump and convinces him to flip" I hope you can understand that as a non-American observer I see a lot of distance between those two claims and find myself confused when they're treated with equivalency.
- rbanffy 2y agoIt doesn’t even need to go through Jeff Yass. It can just be a new Trump resort and casino getting expedited approval in Hong Kong, or some other place. Imagine the business opportunities being POTUS will bring to him and his family. The possibilities for corruption are endless.
- joenot443 2y agoIt doesn't take much imagination; he spent 4y as POTUS and most people agree it was to his personal benefit. I'm not aware of this leading to expedited approvals for Trump resorts in other countries, but it seems you're more familiar with his dealings than I am. I'd still love your clarification though - do you still stand by the claim that Trump is being paid to reneg on his position re. TikTok, as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42755872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42755872 ?
- whiplash451 2y agoTrump will apply a basic principle. Could this thing manipulate my voter base at scale and in the wrong direction? Yes -> kill
- darkerside 2y agoI think it's fair to demonstrate a pattern of behavior without speculating on specifics. Similarly, Trump did not collude with Russia in secret, but he did openly ask them to help him run the election on national TV. What did Russia get for that? Maybe nothing. Maybe goodwill.
- joenot443 2y agoMuch of Trump's decisionmaking in his first term was erratic and generally unwarranted, but I still I think it's totally fair to ask for clarification about claims of that level of severity. To my knowledge, if I'm understanding rbanffy's position correctly, this would be the first time in history US president was directly being bribed by a foreign actor, so I still maintain it's worth seeking clarification. Am I wrong in holding skepticism here? I don't doubt there are political points to be gained for Trump here, especially given the domestically controversial nature of the ban, but I'd really love for someone to hold true to the original notion under question that someone (ByteDance, CCP, etc.) is "paying the incoming president", as rbanffy suggseted.
- ashaikh 2y agoSee the inauguration fund. Money completely unaccounted for and that his team is saying pay to get exclusive access to Trump. It’s pay to play and it’s legal (at least for Americans).
- Applejinx 2y agoCertainly this is not the first time that's happened. Trump has been President before. What he got up to is indeed the first time in history that happened, but not because he was directly bribed by a foreign actor: that's most likely already happened. The case of Trump is entirely stranger.
- jajko 2y ago> Am I wrong in holding skepticism here? Certainly. The whole corruption setup is always done in such a way that there is never direct proof, only some more or less well hidden ones. So if you expect somebody here will post a recording of their bribe negotiations, that won't ever happen, Trump would directly order CIA to eliminate such person with extreme prejudice, and that's how it would have been done. Look, he is crook, smart, properly fucked up man baby with issues that no psychologist could ever fix, but he is a crook at the core. These are facts. Enough evidence with few seconds of googling to condemn 10 such persons of highly amoral and sometimes also criminal behavior. And everybody knows it, even here. So folks understand how to deal with such currently most powerful person, so they do. I don't get where your doubts come from. Facts are out there, you only need to connect few dots.
- _visgean 2y agoThe comment said payment, that does not neccesarily mean money. There are things that tiktok can do for him and the money is least of it.
- joenot443 2y agoIt's hard to find definitions of payment which don't relate to money. There's no doubt in anyone's minds that geopolitical positions benefit some states over others, it's a completely different premise to prescribe real direct compensation. The waters get pretty muddy if we're willing to suggest that American presidents are "paid" by other nations to enact policy which benefits said nations, it's not unreasonable to ask for clarity about such claims.
- 9rx 2y agoMoney is simply debt; an IOU to hand in for something of value in the future. If it helps to have the money abstraction in mind, imagine the debt being called immediately, whereby the thing of value is delivered immediately.
- joenot443 2y agoMost people I know treat money as fiat, something concrete and exchangeable. What I think you’re describing is political favor, something entirely different from what was originally presented.
- 9rx 2y ago> Most people I know treat money as fiat, something concrete and exchangeable. Exactly. Money is the decree – the concrete representation of debt. A recognizable token that can be given to someone that says "I owe you something", which can subsequently be exchanged back by the recipient to get the something of value that they are owed. Which you already know if you've ever used money before, and no doubt you have. But, as it pertains to the topic at hand, in cases where there is no reason to delay delivery of the actual value, you can skip holding the debt. You could go through the motions of receiving money, and then giving it right back in exchange for the thing of value that you are owed, but there is no practical difference between that and cutting money out of the picture and simply accept the thing of value as payment. > What I think you’re describing is political favor Money might be a tool used in offering political favor, I suppose, but that is well beyond the content of my comment about the function of money. How did you manage to reach this conclusion?
- latexr 2y ago> it's a pretty serious allegation Is it, now? He’s a corrupt convicted felon who brags about lying, which despite that was elected president. Do you think he gives a shit about anyone’s allegations? He’d sell your mother for a pack of peanuts. And why not? From his point of view he can do anything he wants and there will be no serious consequences. I recently learned, thanks to another HN comment, that more than half of the USA population has a literacy level below the 6th grade. Suddenly it answered so many questions. https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s...
- kid64 2y agoAnd don't forget that 7% of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/15/seven-percent-of-americans-think-chocolate-milk-comes-from-brown-cows-and-thats-not-even-the-scary-part/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/15/seven...) Kinda says it all.
- purple_turtle 2y agoIs it "7% selected such option in a poll" or is it "7% actually believe this"? People in polls repeatedly select stupid answer either due to confusion, trolling, bad poll design, not caring about what they select and so on. See https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and... ("Lizardman’s Constant Is 4%") > (a friend on Facebook pointed out that 5% of Obama voters claimed to believe that Obama was the Anti-Christ, which seems to be another piece of evidence in favor of a Lizardman’s Constant of 4-5%. On the other hand, I do enjoy picturing someone standing in a voting booth, thinking to themselves “Well, on the one hand, Obama is the Anti-Christ. On the other, do I really want four years of Romney?”)
- IAmGraydon 2y agoYes but 34% of adults lacking literacy proficiency were born outside the US. It seems to me that this is more a reflection that the US has the highest percentage of immigrants of all countries on earth.
- johnchristopher 2y agoI am amazed people are staying so calm and civil in this comment thread.
- joenot443 2y agoI can’t speak for everyone, but personally it’s normalized in my Canadian upbringing to exchange this way.
- johnchristopher 2y ago[flagged]
- joenot443 2y agoThat’s just fine! I’ve met a lot of Americans and their demeanors are pretty varied. I’m open to any kind of dialogue here :) Do you have some insults you’d like to sling?
- johnchristopher 2y ago[flagged]
- joenot443 2y agoBy all means say what you mean John, we're all adults here and no one's impressed by tiptoeing.
- johnchristopher 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoPersonal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are, so please don't post like this to HN. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: it looks like we've had to warn you about this kind of thing more than once before, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26742673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26742673. However, the good news is that it seems to be rare in your otherwise very good commenting history (for which, thank you!) so it should be easy to avoid in the future.
- layer8 2y agoIt's called donation, not payroll. All of big tech seems to be doing it.
- throw310822 2y agoI think that the message put up by TikTok today is already, at least in part, its own payment. "The bad guys blocked your favourite app, luckily you'll have to wait just one day for President Trump to fix this regrettable mess" is a powerful message to send to more than one hundred million Americans. Stupid as you want, but powerful. Same as for the Gaza ceasefire (which will be ignored as soon as the inauguration is over and focus has moved onto other matters).
- gryn 2y agoyou mean the same dude that's currently doing a crypto rug pull based on his presidency ?
- joenot443 2y agoYep, the very same!