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TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

• andrewflnr 2y ago
  On today, the 19th, Trump isn't president yet and can't issue executive orders. Ed: to be clear, the original title specifically mentioned an executive order.
  • ReptileMan 2y ago
    Timezones are always the doom of programmers.
    • ctippett 2y ago
      It's not yet the 20th anywhere in North America.
      • gpm 2y ago
        It is in China though...
        • ReptileMan 2y ago
          One person got the joke ...
          • whimsicalism 2y ago
            you might read that as a signal about the quality of the ‘joke’
            • ReptileMan 2y ago
              Variants of this have been around for a century. Russian Prime Minister Medvedev comes to President Putin and nervously tells him to abolish these time zones. - Why, Putin asks him? - Ah, I can't find myself with these times: - I fly to another city, call home and everyone is asleep, - I last woke you up at 4 in the morning, but I thought it was only evening, - I call Angela Merkel to congratulate her on her birthday and she tells me she had it yesterday, - I wish the Chinese President a happy New Year, and he says it will be tomorrow. - Well, these are just minor awkwardness, Putin answered him - Do you remember when that Polish plane crashed with the president? I called them to express my condolences, but the plane hadn't taken off yet !!
    • andrewflnr 2y ago
      I live in Virginia.
      • ReptileMan 2y ago
        But developers of TikTok live in Shanghai
        • TomK32 2y ago
          Trump still has to do the inauguration. Even a reptile should understand the basic procedures of office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_inauguration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ina...
  • oldpersonintx 2y ago
    [dead]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Cumpiler69 2y ago
  [flagged]
• belter 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • dang 2y ago
    "Eschew flamebait." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• ipsum2 2y ago
  There was no executive order. Turning off Tiktok yesterday was a highly successful political stunt.
  • kotaKat 2y ago
    Bingo, bango, boingo. Just another way to help manipulate people into thinking Trump saved the day, once again. TikTok played the propaganda just right.
    • Xmd5a 2y ago
      - The Occupy Wall Street movement. - A COINTELPRO-inspired diversion undermines the cause: during demonstrations, individuals wishing to speak must wait in line, while women, minorities, and other groups are prioritized. - This method becomes widespread in media narratives over the next 15 years, fueling focus on these topics and deepening societal divisions while bankers slip under the radar. - Initially driven by billionaires, the movement is soon co-opted by financial firms, corporations, and government entities. - Ultimately, Trump is reinstated, while Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, and, to some extent, Altman align with Thiel and Musk, reversing their previous stances with a dramatic 180° shift. The oligarchy endures.
    • notfed 2y ago
      It's funny to imagine how, very deeply ironically, it turned out to be a national security risk after all.
  • kj4ips 2y ago
    There is, it's a few days old, and it's a non-enforcement from the Biden administration, according to the man himself and his staffers, he intends to let it be the next administration's problem. Whatever the next administration does when it takes power is yet to be seen. The restrict act was written really strangely, and I assume Oracle required some assurance from someone to not just delete Bytedance's accounts and resources.
    • qingcharles 2y ago
• Leary 2y ago
  Trump wants 50% US ownership in a joint venture for Tiktok. Shouldn't be a problem since 60% of bytedance ownership is already non-China (probably a lot of it already US investors - General Atlantic/SIG) https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113855616848696050 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1138556168486...
  • whatshisface 2y ago
    All this and it was only 40% Chinese-owned???
    • thatguymike 2y ago
      With the algorithm 100% Chinese-operated
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    • baq 2y ago
      You seem to think percentage of ownership works the same way in China as in the West. That’s an understandable mistake
  • illusive4080 2y ago
    Doesn’t matter what he thinks. Executive cannot override legislative action.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • pjc50 2y ago
      The law always allowed for divesting to US owners. It didn't specify who.
    • metabagel 2y ago
      The Supreme Court can always say that it can.
• undersuit 2y ago
  Tiktok has been working for the last 40 minutes for me after going dark last night. Some thoughts from Donald Trump: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113855616848696050 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1138556168486...
  • chvid 2y ago
    Incredible. Isn't ByteDance already owned 60% by international (mostly American) investors? https://usds.tiktok.com/who-owns-tiktoks-parent-company-bytedance/ https://usds.tiktok.com/who-owns-tiktoks-parent-company-byte...
    • markus_zhang 2y ago
      You need to drill deeper to figure out who really holds the money bag. Not to say I know anything, but this page doesn't really say much. But again, I don't really care about the nationality of the elites.
    • roskelld 2y ago
      Have a look at the golden shares part of that, 1% gets you a lot. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-ban-bytedance-golden-shares-chinese-government-communist-party-board-2023-3?op=1 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-ban-b...
      • atlintots 2y ago
        Per the article, those shares are not in TikTok: > The ByteDance unit that sold golden shares to China's government holds the licenses of Toutiao and Douyin to operate under local law. So those shares don't mean much as far as TikTok's operations are concerned.
• shihab 2y ago
  Is anyone aware of any opinion poll among US population about banning tiktok? This to me feels like one of the issues with potentially largest disconnect between voters and politicians Edit: found one from Pew. "The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32%." Sept 05, 2024. In contrast, 87% US lawmakers voted for the law that caused this.
  • aksss 2y ago
    You know polls are a rotten way to make policy. Easily manipulated. In fact, Hitches said in "Letters..." that any time you see a poll just realize it's someone trying to change your mind with the bandwagon fallacy - isolating your own opinion as wrong and outside the norm or trying to reinforce the "right" opinion by confirming that you're part of the cool-kid club.
    • shihab 2y ago
      Yes, polls are an imperfect tool. But I think they remain the only tool we have to gauge what decisions coming out of Washington are product of broad popular support vs ones product of intense lobbying from shadowy powers.
      • lukeschlather 2y ago
        Most policies aren't the sort of thing that is going to attract broad popular support (or opposition.) Did you look at the opposition numbers? Who are the "shadowy powers?" Lawmakers say that China is the shadowy partner here doing bad things with Tiktok. I don't necessarily trust the US government on this issue, but I was speaking to a Chinese national last year, they asked me why the US was banning Tiktok. When I said "because China is using it to spy on Americans" they replied "Of course they are!" and laughed. I think there are probably some people who are pushing this for self-interested reasons (American social media apps) but also I think the stated reason for the ban is probably the truthful motivation, and I'm ambivalent about trusting the US government and US corporations not to spy on me, but I tend to trust the US government when they say they are trying to stop China from spying on me. And if zero people spying on me is not an option, well, fewer people would probably be an improvement.
• 9283409232 2y ago
  Feels like they published this statement a day early as Trump is not yet president. Whoops.
  • jmholla 2y ago
    What statement? This entire article recognizes that Trump is not president yet.
    • 9283409232 2y ago
      My comment was originally in another thread that was a statement from Tiktok on Twitter. It looks like this thread was merged with another one so my comment might not make sense now.
• robswc 2y ago
  The straight up "shout out" in the pop-up, I almost couldn't believe my eyes. I don't think I've seen anything like it in a long time. I also don't think an American company would ever do that as it seems "unprofessional." Ironically, it probably got them huge bonus points so they know what they're doing.
  • notahacker 2y ago
    I mean, the promise to boosting Trump in the popup is probably literally what got them the promise of an executive order, possibly with the suggestion that if they wanted to stay on Trump's good side they'd best ensure their algorithm was Trump-friendly in future.
    • cycrutchfield 2y ago
      Of course, everything he does is quid pro quo. Now he has a sword of damocles he can hang over their head to ensure he can get anything he wants in the future.
      • scotty79 2y ago
        Besides, China doesn't mind propping Trump as they correctly see him as a simpleton who is going to delay USA development by a decade.
        • cycrutchfield 2y ago
          How remarkable that our major geopolitical enemies (with the exception of Iran) support our incoming president. He must truly be a great uniter that will usher in a new age of global peace.
          • samr71 2y ago
            [flagged]
• rvz 2y ago
  So once again it took the incoming president-elect Trump and for Biden to lose to intervene and reverse this ban and give an extension to TikTok. If Biden or Harris won the election, TikTok would have been completely banned with zero intervention at all as you have seen with how it went and Biden whilst still being president would have done nothing and it took Trump to stop it. Seriously the Democrats made themselves look very bad with this situation.
  • watwut 2y ago
    Trump literally originated it back then. Trump is not a president yet.
    • rvz 2y ago
      You realize that is even worse for the Democrats? So why didn't Biden stop it? He had plenty of time to do so and he did not and signed it.
      • pavlov 2y ago
        Congress writes laws and the president is supposed to implement and enforce them. It’s like Americans have completely forgotten about this part. The TikTok ban was upheld by the Supreme Court only days ago. If Americans don’t want this law, they should elect a different Congress.
      • curt15 2y ago
        It passed the Senate by the safely veto-proof margin 79–18
        • bigstrat2003 2y ago
          That does not excuse signing a bill into law. If the president opposes a bill, he should veto it even if Congress will override the veto. To do otherwise is to be complicit. So to the extent that you think this bill is bad and shouldn't have been passed, Biden is to blame regardless of how strong the congressional majority was.
• mrtksn 2y ago
  Amazing stunt: The establishment tried to limit freedom of speech and Trump saved the day. Probably a pre-agreed sequence of events. Never mind that it was him who initially trued to ban it. Nevertheless a positive development.
  • airstrike 2y ago
    I don't think that's an accurate read. Everyone was playing chicken and the US won. TikTok will be up for sale again, except this time with way less leverage in negotiating a sale.
    • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
      ... I can't even. How did US win? OP effectively nailed all the facets in which it is overall the worst of all worlds. Few individual political players have won, but it certainly was not US or us.
      • airstrike 2y ago
        The US won because TikTok will sell.
        • notfed 2y ago
          "The US won because <wild uncited guess about the future>."
          • airstrike 2y ago
            Trump didn't overturn the Supreme Court's decision. He only gave TikTok a 90-day lifeline. They need a solution to be allowed to operate. Either they will have to cut ties with the CCP and operate truly independently—and provide assurances for that—or they will sell to someone and make billions. I know which of the two I'd pick, but yeah, I guess you can say they might also restructure out of the CCP's control, which I think is unlikely because China then just gets paid $0. Another alternative would be for lawmakers in this new congress to change the law they just passed but given the Republican majority is very narrow and there is plenty of support for the ban across the isle, I find it hard to believe they will be able to do so. But sure, that's also a possible scenario.
• grepfru_it 2y ago
  [flagged]
• ripped_britches 2y ago
  For those saying there’s no executive order yet or that Trump is not president yet, the point is that they received confirmation that there will be an executive order, meaning they can rely on a 90 day extension of non-enforcement. So while there is some irony with Trump having previously supported the ban, the practical reality is that he and Susquehanna and the Republicans all are winning big on this one, from a political/financial lens.
  • repeekad 2y ago
    The issue is Trump doesn’t have legal authority to issue an executive order delaying the ban, executive orders “execute” the law, delaying would be the opposite of the law, a law that was held up 9–0 as constitutional by the Supreme Court face palm
    • whatshisface 2y ago
      There is some precedent for doing this. State-level cannabis legalization rests on non-enforcement at the federal level, at which it remains scheduled.
      • repeekad 2y ago
        Sure, but there’s no executive order saying we promise not to enforce it (I assume?), that would be counter to the law even if the absence of enforcement is a legal grey area Either way it feels like there are games being played, and the country is watching because tik tok is so heavily used by so many people
        • whatshisface 2y ago
          As far as I can tell, what happened is this law was passed in the heat of the moment (Gaza war), but it turned out to be massively unpopular and ineffective at shoring up US support for the outgoing administration's foreign policy, and even after its moment had passed the combination of the arguments raised by the lawyers for ByteDance and the phrasing of the very unique, very specific bill got it through the Supreme Court, so now everyone's been stuck with trying to figure out how to get rid of it.
• mikeweiss 2y ago
  Trump and team may be the biggest public relations masterminds of all time. They realize that the populous is fickle and easily won over with obvious stunts. Define the villains and play the hero. It keeps working for him over and over and over. Truly incredible.
  • amazingamazing 2y ago
    I really hate Trump, but the guy is a media (read: not political) genius. I doubt there will ever be someone like him in the Republican, or any party again.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • whatshisface 2y ago
      A little over 100 years ago the massively popular party enemy #1 T.R. was running roughshod over the republican convention.
      • jddj 2y ago
        Also a fan of executive action over congressional consent. And the son of a wealthy father in new york. And opposed by a Democratic party which was very much controlled (to a fault) by its machine. That's roughly where the similarities end though. I think they'd have strongly diverged on key points such as a man's duty to his country in war, presidential pardons, and right in the *****.
    • replwoacause 2y ago
      Calling him a genius isn’t quite accurate. He’s not a genius anything. But he does have orbiters who know what they’re doing. He’s mostly just a puppet.
  • y33t 2y ago
    > Define the villains and play the hero. There's a quote I can't find right now that goes something along the lines of "If you let somebody define the terms of your reality, you've made a sorcerer out of them, unless you catch the bastard real quick". Trump to a T.
• dang 2y ago
  Recent and related: TikTok goes dark in the US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753396 - Jan 2025 (2187 comments)
• spicyusername 2y ago
  Man, the current democratic party just does not know how to solve problems in a way that people appreciate. Absurd that the Republicans are somehow going to swoop in and "Save the day" on an issue they themselves championed.
  • dataflow 2y ago
    > Man, the current democratic party just does not know how to solve problems in a way that people appreciate. What would have been a solution to the problem that people would have appreciated?
    • silvestrov 2y ago
      Publish the algorithm. Allow users to choose which algorithm they want to use.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • Hatrix 2y ago
        Facebook?
        • undersuit 2y ago
          Yeah you can choose to use Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, or Threads freely. /s
      • hackyhacky 2y ago
        What does this even mean? There is no "algorithm": the policies of a service like Tiktok are spread throughout its entirety. The only meaningful way to "release the algorithm" would be to release the whole source code. Furthermore, releasing the source code wouldn't help, since regular people aren't able to understand what it means; and there is no way to verify that the released source code corresponds to what is actually being run. It would be great if there was some way to verify that a service you're using matches some published code, but we don't have that.
• Brystephor 2y ago
  What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it? Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly. Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
  • palata 2y ago
    > What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it? In Trump's world, I think you should cause a problem, blame somebody else, and then fix it.
  • yieldcrv 2y ago
    Is it a big political statement to shut down a couple hours before the deadline of shutting down? The app stores removed the app in accordance with that timeline too.
    • TypingOutBugs 2y ago
      There was no deadline, the app stores didn’t need to remove it. The Biden administration said it would be left to the Trump administration to review, they had no reason to shut it down. It’s purely to force Trumps hand a bit.
      • yieldcrv 2y ago
        Thanks. So that was between friday night and today, that means it would also be true that Bytedance could not rely on the autonomous aspects of the US government to not create liability, unless given an explicit assurance. I wouldn't say following the law would be purely to force a hand, I would say multiple things can be true at once. They still had liability. Other government agencies, like the SEC, has been filing court cases all the way till the last minute even though they’ll likely get dropped tomorrow. It is understandable to take a risk averse approach for a company.
      • arandomusername 2y ago
• fatfox 2y ago
  So to put it bluntly, sweet talking a president-elect can overturn a Supreme Court decision? Interesting political culture.
  • airstrike 2y ago
    Hardly. A delay on the ban isn't tantamount to undoing the Supreme Court's decision. It's good to be precise with terminology and facts, especially in legal matters.
    • nickthegreek 2y ago
      explain how he (a private citizen) can give a 90 day extension on a deadline that is passed with criteria that can not be certified and had to have been already given to congress? Please be precise with terminology and facts in these legal matters.
      • sadeshmukh 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • nickthegreek 2y ago
          The bill does not give the private citizen the authority to do this.
          • sadeshmukh 2y ago
            The president can, and he promises he will take said action.
      • airstrike 2y ago
        He's not just any private citizen, he's the president elect who will be inaugurated in a day. I'm sure his word carries way more weight than mine. I'm not privy to the specific words that were exchanged, so it's hard to be precise. But I imagine it was some form of Trump saying "by tomorrow, I will give you a 90-day extension. I have a gentleman's agreement with the current government that if you do not stop your services in the 24 hours between now and my inauguration, you won't face any issues, so please carry on and we will clean this mess up later". If you want a private citizen analogy, it's similar to someone saying they won't press charges despite a third-party being in flagrant illegal behavior. In this case, it's the US government saying they won't press charges. Both Biden and Trump have said as much, if my understanding of the case is correct, and one can assume they have discussed this with the appropriate branches of government.
• oldpersonintx 2y ago
  [dead]
• ein0p 2y ago
  Masterful PR move by Trump. Two ways to win, no way to lose: he gets control of the narrative there (if not TikTok itself, via one of his cronies), and he shows how totalitarian the "democrats" are.
  • nickthegreek 2y ago
    > and he shows how totalitarian the "democrats" are. and by that you are including the massive majority of republican legislators who also sit on intel committees also voted for it with resounding vigor?
    • ein0p 2y ago
      Yes, they too would like to show how totalitarian the "democrats" are. Jokes aside, the buck stops with the guy who signs the bill into law. Too bad the guy signing the bill didn't even understand what he was signing this time due to his profound dementia.
• Buttons840 2y ago
  The TikTok debate has always been about the balance between national security and free speech. We found a compromise. TikTok will remain, all of its national security risks will remain. Also, the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court, but will be blantently ignored and unenforced. Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
  • vasco 2y ago
    Soldiers were already sharing videos of aircraft carriers on Rednote which hasn't gone through the whole shenanigans of paying Larry Ellison to host it on Oracle Cloud and so on. The national security risk is the US military apparently not being able to convince its own soldiers to be thoughtful about cybersecurity.
    • whatshisface 2y ago
      How does it matter where those videos were shared? Material is either classified or unclassified, it doesn't matter if the WarThunder forums (for example) are moderated by US nationals or not.
      • vasco 2y ago
        It's not about where the videos are posted, it's about having apps that collect exact GPS position of smartphones that soldiers carry while the position of the ships they are on is classified. The fact that there's videos is just the "proof" that they have installed such apps that exfiltrate things like their location, for example. Famously, soldiers wanted to use strava in secret military bases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
        • whatshisface 2y ago
          If you want to secure sailors' phones you are going to have to do a lot more, and at the same time much less, than ban or transfer the ownership of one single app that happens to be used by over a hundred million civilians.
• mrkramer 2y ago
  I would like to ask Chinese president Xi Jinping when will Google and Facebook be available in China and all the rest of the Western social apps. Can I get any clarity and assurance? Thanks.
  • Gormo 2y ago
    Reminds me of the ultimatum I gave my dog last week: I told him that if he didn't stop pooping on the floor, I would punish him by pooping on the floor myself.
    • BitterCritter 2y ago
      I think that’s a bad metaphor, though I don’t particularly know what you’re trying to say.
      • SOTGO 2y ago
        I think they're trying to say that you don't respond to bad behavior (China banning apps) with your own bad behavior (US banning apps). If America is opposed to the way China handles social media then we shouldn't seek to emulate them
        • Supermancho 2y ago
          > I think they're trying to say that you don't respond to bad behavior (China banning apps) with your own bad behavior (US banning apps). This presumes an assumption. I don't consider the banning as a lever for ensuring US controls Tiktok as bad behavior. America has a vested interest in snooping on and having direct control over popular mediums of communication. Giving Chinese ownership access to the methods used (like the physical devices, et al), is a security issue. It's a cold war game that seems a little sophisticated for this day and age (somehow). The lack of understanding explains a lot of these wandering conversation about tangents.
          • Gormo 2y ago
• tracer4201 2y ago
  [dead]
• sekai 2y ago
  The people pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue are ignoring that no one was requiring TikTok to change their content at all. The law was written to allow for 0 impact on users if the CCP-connected parent company simply divested. Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company. But ByteDance’s allegiance isn’t to their shareholders.
  • skizm 2y ago
    I'm not defending them here, but the laws in China prevent a sale, so technically they have a duty to uphold China's laws first before upholding their fiduciary responsibility. Same with any American company and following American laws.
    • pjc50 2y ago
      > the laws in China prevent a sale First I've heard of this. The conflicting legal obligations remind me of the Microsoft "safe harbour" case, which is becoming a lot more relevant and still isn't really adequately resolved.
      • adastra22 2y ago
        They’re confusing the US TikTok subsidiary with ByteDance parent organization. They were only required to sell the subsidiary. Ironically this would be enforcing the very same law that exists in China, where all companies have to be majority Chinese owned.
        • rfoo 2y ago
          I believe the law mentioned here isn't focused on which organization it is. The law itself basically said you can't export recommendation algorithm. Yes, in the very similar wording as in "you can't export certain GPU chips".
          • 2y ago
• airstrike 2y ago
  My read is that the US government originally wanted to try to force TikTok to restructure its relationship with China so it wouldn't be under control of the party, either by leaving the country or more likely selling to a US-friendly owner. This was the argument when Trump toyed with the idea during his first mandate. Occam's Razor suggests this was due to both a matter of national security from the perspective of the intelligence community and pressure from US companies who have struggled to outcompete TikTok. Basically an "everybody wins" move for the powers that be.[1] China understandably didn't want to lose its influence, and ByteDance didn't want to give up this incredibly valuable asset, so they said "We'll call your bluff and fight you on the basis of the freedom of speech". The US government then moved to get a law signed that carves out a very specific way to force ByteDance's hand. I'm sure there were lots of lawyers involved and maybe some back channel with the SCOTUS to make sure this was done in a constitutional manner so that it would survive a suit from TikTok which was all but guaranteed.[2] That plan worked, so now ByteDance/TikTok/CCP are again forced to sell, except they come to this round of negotiations in a much worse position than they were originally. This makes it better for the many, many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset. But these buyers don't want the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero, so they must also be pressuring president-elect Trump to reinstate the app so that it can continue to be used by Americans and therefore remain valuable, so that when they actually get their money's worth when it inevitably changes hands. Trump isn't restoring TikTok so that it can continue to operate as in the "status quo ante bellum negotii". He's restoring it so that {insert buyer} can claim the spoils in a few weeks. --- [1]: We can debate whether "everybody wins" includes the US population, but I think they do, because Chinese influence over US culture is strictly worse than US influence over US culture, seeing as incentives are by definition irreconcilable and therefore always worse if under control of the CCP. [2]: It stands to reason that all of the US government and the top echelons of business and finance is operating in concert here to drive the outcome they want, which is to remove the influence of the CCP over young American minds and to benefit from forcing the asset to be controlled by a US entity.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
    << That plan worked, so now ByteDance/TikTok/CCP are again forced to sell, except they come to this round of negotiations in a much worse position than they were originally. I appreciate the analysis even if I disagree with it. << many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset. It is mildly funny given that China is not selling it. It was defacto made a real geopolitical issue with 170m US users as pawns. They may well be buyers, but China is not in a position of weakness here. If anything, the past 48h showed that users can simply say 'fuck it' out of spite. In short, from game theory perspective, even if they decided to sell, they can now extract heavy concessions. Yeah, US won so hard on this one. As I may have mentioned in another post, individual players may have gained some ground, but that is it. US lost a lot in this exchange alone.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• unangst 2y ago
  Another opportunistic nothing burger victory and reason for further tech billionaire fealty. Sigh.
  • ein0p 2y ago
    Do you mean the ban, or the removal of the ban? I'm confused. Because I'm pretty sure the ban is at least in part supported by Zuck, and that's why he gave $300M+ to elect a vegetable in 2020, and that's why Meta is spending more than ever on lobbying: https://readsludge.com/2024/04/23/meta-shatters-lobbying-record-as-house-passes-tiktok-ban/ https://readsludge.com/2024/04/23/meta-shatters-lobbying-rec...
    • Finnucane 2y ago
      Dr. T's reversal was at least partly due to the influence of David Yass, who owns a chunk of ByteDance and saved the TruthSocial IPO, making Trump's holding actually worth something. So he owes Yass bigly. Presumably other wealthy friends stand to win. Steve Mnuchin wanted to buy it.
      • etblg 2y ago
        Jeff Yass?
        • Finnucane 2y ago
          Do you think I'd look it up instead of going by my aging mushy memory?
      • ein0p 2y ago
        Word is Musk is offering to buy a controlling stake as well. The whole thing is a racket though: ByteDance is already 60% owned by global institutional investors, including firms such as Blackrock, Susquehanna International Group, Carlyle Group, and General Atlantic. Another 20% are owned by employees, and another 20% by co-founders. Given this, I'm not sure how ByteDance could "sell TikTok" to an US investor - they don't own 50% of it themselves.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• amaldavid 2y ago
  [flagged]
• r0ckarong 2y ago
  We're watching the downfall live on stream. They were wrong, the revolution will not be televised is right, the fascist uprising happened in your social media instead.
  • righthand 2y ago
    People seem to misunderstand this metaphor. It’s not about what type of tech the revolution is broadcasted on, it’s about the fact that you’ll be sitting there watching the revolution from the comfort of wherever you are. You will not be doing anything to actually be apart of the revolution, making the revolution more for your entertainment than your detriment/benefit.
  • thrance 2y ago
    It's not really a revolution, moreso a slow downfall into mediocrity, irrationalism and hatred, wrapped in stars and stripes.
  • jackjeff 2y ago
    As long as this is the only place the fascist upraising happens… better than being forced out of your job, making all other political parties illegal, being beaten by mobs patrolling the streets while the police looks the other way, canceling elections ad vitam eternam on national security grounds, I mean stuff that proper fascists used to do back in the days. In the mean time, if I wanted 30 seconds clips of cat videos I’m sure I could use a VPN. Let’s ban it. Teach people censorship is utter BS like every Chinese person knows by now. Sadly my attention span is slightly longer than 30s so I’m not even gonna bother
• that_guy_iain 2y ago
  I think it's funny that it's going online because the new President told people to just ignore the law. Interestingly, he is a convicted criminal so it kinda makes sense he would just tell folk to ignore the law. And even more interestingly, the back the blue/law and order type folks will be thinking this is a great move.
• exogeny 2y ago
  That is so embarrassing for the Democrats. Trump comes out that he wants to ban it, Biden finally does on like, the last week of his presidency, just so Trump can come in and save it. Now the millions of people who make their living on TikTok and everyone else who simply likes the app are now thanking Trump for bringing back the app he wanted to ban in the first place. Just staggering incompetence.
• plutoh28 2y ago
  Trump's proposed executive order just gives TikTok more time "so that a deal could be made." Honestly I don't understand how TikTok is able to restore service now before the executive order or even the inaugaration has occured.
  • firesteelrain 2y ago
    It’s back so couldn’t have been that hard.
  • kristjansson 2y ago
    There was no legal requirement they block service at all, only that other companies stop doing business with them (i.e. App Stores stop distributing, etc.)
    • pockmarked19 2y ago
      This. It is not back in stores.
    • nickthegreek 2y ago
      Pretty sure Oracle had to turn off the servers. I feel like Oracle is now not complying with the law. Apple and Google appear to be as of writing this.
      • manquer 2y ago
        Securities fraud suit incoming I suppose. Shareholders will sue Oracle for not disclosing the risk and exposing company to the fine
• ojbyrne 2y ago
  Is it too conspiracy-theorist to notice that the timeline for this matches the $TRUMP grift that added significant $billions to our new president’s net worth?
  • metabagel 2y ago
    Somebody invested $6 billion in Trump’s meme coin. There should be an investigation.
    • chgs 2y ago
      Nobody cares any more. We’re a long way from making Carter sell his farm. We’re a long way from the integrity of Nixon. We’re a long way from the fidelity of Clinton. This is what the American people wanted.
• nextworddev 2y ago
  This whole theater from the start was designed to flex just how much influence China has on the U.S.
  • nickthegreek 2y ago
    No matter what happens now, china was the real winner here.
• jcstryker 2y ago
  Curious to see if this ends up increasing the userbase and TikTok's foothold in American culture.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• thepace 2y ago
  Congress looking towards an enforcement while the President trying to make a deal. It is going to be interesting how this plays out. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-johnson-2-gop-senators-break-trump-tiktok-extension-rcna188307 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-johnson-2-...
  • zrail 2y ago
    I wonder how Mr. Johnson is proposing to do his enforcement, seeing as how the executive is the branch of government charged with enforcing the laws.
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
      Congress could impeach. In a sane world, if the executive continually ignores Congress, then that's what would happen.
      • zrail 2y ago
        In a sane world. This particular person has been impeached and acquitted twice over, though, so I'm not sure we're there anymore.
      • dragonelite 2y ago
        Completely lose the zoomer voting base in the near to mid future?
  • almog 2y ago
    Exactly. We could have had a discussion about whether a executive order can override house of representatives had such order be issued by Trump post inauguration yet overriding it prior to that should be the bigger deal here.
    • greycol 2y ago
      It's unfortunately not news that a Trump presidency doesn't respect the mores of the office. The president can pardon people for breaking federal law and can stop the enforcement of federal law[1] so as president elect it makes sense that he can effectively neuter any federal law short of congress deciding he has gone to far and impeaching and removing him. [1]i.e. federal agencies no longer prosecute personal marijuana use by executive order
• kouru225 2y ago
  Completely unrelated but here’s the Wikipedia for an interesting book called The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo-events_in_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo...
  • TomK32 2y ago
    (1962) is shockingy relevant. I have to read more dystopian sci fi from that era just to keep up with current event
    • BLKNSLVR 2y ago
      "Trouble Every Day", a song by Frank Zappa released in 1966, that's just as relevant nearly 60 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNkacckLBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNkacckLBU (but not in a way relevant to the TikTok topic)
  • monitorlizard 2y ago
    Have you read it, and if so, do you recommend it?
  • flocciput 2y ago
    Similarly, you might be interested in the Adam Curtis documentary HyperNormalisation: https://vimeo.com/191817381 https://vimeo.com/191817381
    • kouru225 2y ago
      +1 to Adam Curtis. Binged everything he's ever made last year.
• idhegeu 2y ago
  Trump should launch a Tiktok clone on Truth Social in 90 days when the reprieve expires. I'm surprised there wasn't a new platform ready to pounce on new users. Absolutely nuts that one of the biggest refugee destinations is literally named after a Mao-era propaganda tool. But in all seriousness, there's 3 branches of government and 2 of spoken. Trump's voice should be moot. Hopefully he's put in his place by our institutions and shamed for attempting to subvert the system of checks and balances described by our constitution.
  • notfed 2y ago
    He for sure pitched this, but his team does not have the skills to create this.
  • gaoryrt 2y ago
    Chinese here, sorry for my poor English. I want you to know that the name of the app is '小红书' (小 little 红 red 书 book), and the name of the propaganda tool is '红宝书' (红 red 宝 treasure 书 book). I don't think there is such a "name after" thing. There are a lot of mixed reviews on Cultual Revolution, a "name after" would bring a lot of risks during the growth of the app.
    • idhegeu 2y ago
      Thank you for clarifying! The english translations are similar enough that I assumed a connection.
• voidfunc 2y ago
  Least surprising outcome of 2025.
  • TomK32 2y ago
    Truth be told, I did expect Trump to suck up to Putin first...
• axegon_ 2y ago
  Seems I spoke too soon about the US taking a good decision for once when it comes to cyber and civil security. Well... I wonder what muskov will come up with now that twitter is still at large inaccessible in China but tiktok is welcome in the US.
  • TomK32 2y ago
    TikTok is still blocked in China.
    • SOTGO 2y ago
      Douyin is the Chinese TikTok equivalent. China isn't opposed to the concept of short form video, they just want to segregate Chinese users into their own app
      • sensanaty 2y ago
        Douyin also doesn't allow nearly as much brainrot as you see on tiktok, and definitely doesn't allow anything that challenges the CCP.
      • eunos 2y ago
        I heard they opened Douyin registration recently
        • gowings97 2y ago
          Yes, but it's irrelevant - Apple and Google refuse to allow Douyin on the iOS and Google Play stores, as of writing (and I do not see this changing)
          • eunos 2y ago
            Sounds like it's a good time to break app store duopoly
• ThinkBeat 2y ago
  Strange to see the ACLU and Trump having common cause. https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-is-unconstitutional-the-supreme-court-must-step-in https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-i... https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok-ban https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok... TikTok is coming back online after Trump pledged to restore it https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/19/tech/tiktok-ban/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/19/tech/tiktok-ban/index.htm...
  • drewbeck 2y ago
    The ACLU tends to take pretty hard line civil liberty positions, including defending hateful folks if their civil liberties are impinged. They’re not strictly a progressive organization.
    • ImJamal 2y ago
      They don't really hold hard-line positions anymore. The ACLU would no longer defend the speech of a neo-nazi, for example.
  • drooby 2y ago
    What does the ACLU not understand.. The law does not ban TikTok.. it requires divestment from a foreign adversary.. Said foreign adversary refuses to divest, thus the company is shutting itself down
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • rocmcd 2y ago
    Classic "Bootleggers and Baptists" situation [0], where both parties are in favor for self-serving reasons. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
• blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  This is a disgusting betrayal of America and a violation of our process, given Congress passed a law and it was then unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court. Unless Trump can show that Bytedance met the three conditions that permit an extension, this will backfire and alienate a portion of his base.
  • metabagel 2y ago
    It’s a cult of personality. By definition it’s him they support and who informs their thinking. He can’t alienate his supporters, because they don’t have any framework to fall back on.
• maxcruer 2y ago
  this is on the edge of becoming a shitshow...
  • nvarsj 2y ago
    The US has already jumped head first into the shit can. All those ideals of democracy I learned about growing up in the US - checks and balances, the rule of law, land of opportunity. It's all become a massive joke.
    • bamboozled 2y ago
      Well it needed people to enforce those things and it needed people to vote. Both those things didn’t happen.
      • userbinator 2y ago
        People voted.
  • rasz 2y ago
    Wait till you see US troops on the ground in Ukraine working hand in hand with russians, killing Ukrainians because Zelensky refused Trump "just give up" deal.
• _heimdall 2y ago
  That didn't take long. Can we now roll back the bill that gave presidents the authority to unilaterally ban a service in the first place?
  • spencerflem 2y ago
    The president didn't ban it. Congress did, and the Supreme Court upheld their right to. I am opposed to the ban fwiw, but being able to overrule it is a pretty big power grab for the president
    • _heimdall 2y ago
      Didn't the law passed by Congress give the president the power to deem a service owned in part by foreign entities as a national security threat? I may very well have horribly misunderstood the situation, but I though Congress here only allowed the president to decide.
      • spencerflem 2y ago
        No, there was a similar one letting the president declare nonprofits a terrorist organization though. The TikTok one doesn't have input from the president, its all apps of a certain size owned by a country we dont like. Hence, Marvel Snap got banned too in the crossfire
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
      • spencerflem 2y ago
        My bad, its both actually. The law lists some criteria, unambiguously including TikTok and Bytedance by name, and then says the president can add more if they want, though this power has not been used yet. It sucks so hard how the Dems keep expanding the powers of the Pres right before handing it to Trump
        • 2y ago
• jason2323 2y ago
  Embarrassing.
  • TomK32 2y ago
    Entertaining. But then, I'm European far away from this orange man.
    • jajko 2y ago
      Nobody is far enough, not with that actual power. Everything is connected and ripple effects travel far. Plus our european politicians are weak and largely clueless, we will fold in front of China and let them roll over our automotive industry. There is war at our doorstep and enemy who repeatedly claimed he will wipe out half of our population, yet our reaction is next to 0, both immediate and long term.
    • userbinator 2y ago
      It's entertaining in the US too.
    • replwoacause 2y ago
      Yeah you say that, but I just saw Elonia Musk stirring the pot by calling for MEGA “Make Europe Great Again”, so it seems he’s trying to spread his cancerous views into your political systems now too.
• hbarka 2y ago
  “Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX), the author of the bill to ban TikTok, owns hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Meta, one of TikTok's chief rivals. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) bought up to $50,000 worth of Meta stock last January before voting to ban TikTok in April." Exhibit 1. https://www.capitoltrades.com/issuers/431610?page=2 https://www.capitoltrades.com/issuers/431610?page=2
  • lm28469 2y ago
    To be fair they're all inside trading and most of them are corrupt. Time to wake up America
    • mmooss 2y ago
      That kind of comment has the opposite effect, it keeps people asleep with lazy (and corrupt) misinformation. Whenever people say 'they are all the same', they help cover for the actual bad behavior - it's now hidden among all the other behavior and not worth examining or pursuing, and rationalized. They are certainly not all the same. If you don't distinguish them, you cut down the people actually fighting on the front lines. It's friendly fire. They are shot in the back.
      • lm28469 2y ago
        At some point you have to wonder if they're just not allowed to exist to allow plausible deniability... Either way it's clearly not going in the right direction when you have a guy selling cans of fucking beans from the oval office and launching crypto rug pulls
    • MichaelDickens 2y ago
      Suppose I wake up and discover that all congresspeople are insider trading. What do I do next?
      • dymk 2y ago
        Tell everybody else about it, because most Americans are simply unaware at how blatant the insider trading is and how it works.
• eatsyourtacos 2y ago
  Anyone that didn't see this coming is so naive- Trump only cares about optics. Look at the message when opening tiktok "Thanks to President Trump"... there is no way he didn't say "look, you HAVE TO PUT MY NAME OUT THERE or you are being banned". But yet morons will be like "trump saved tiktok!!!"
• IvyMike 2y ago
  Big 1984 energy coming from this story. “It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”
  • ijidak 2y ago
    Human society is collapsing. The stuff playing out on right now was science fiction when 1984 was written. This whole charade has had me laughing since yesterday. The Caesars of Rome often played these public games to make themselves look magnanimous, while at the same time consolidating power and control.
    • pjc50 2y ago
      Sadly, Orwell was not hugely imaginative, he was just aware of things that happened in the Soviet Union.
      • ternnoburn 2y ago
        It's worth remembering that Orwell was a socialist, a leftist, and was anti authoritarian not anti communist. (Which isn't opposed to your comment, the Soviet Union was authoritarian.) It just gets brought up so often that because he was anti Soviet, he must be anti communist, which wasn't the case.
        • randomcatuser 2y ago
          [flagged]
        • pjc50 2y ago
          He was always socialist, but ended up as anti-communist after the Spanish civil war, during which while fighting for the Marxist POUM he had to flee a Stalinist purge. (Americans love to flatten all left parties into "communist", ignoring the rich history of ideological differences and occasionally violent purges) Huge fan of Orwell myself.
• dailykoder 2y ago
  >supreme court says that tiktok might be a threat to national security >yeah, let's just ignore that. Dance videos on tiktok are more important than security That's so f-in absurd. I can't even wrap my head around why anyone would literally protest against the ban. I just hope that germany, or rather europe, will have such a ban, too, and that it get enforced properly.
  • logicchains 2y ago
    National security is a load of crap. How can you still believe anything they say when the entire security establishment literally bold-faced lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction to justify a completely unnecessary war?
    • baq 2y ago
      Right out of the KGB and FSB playbook: feed them so much lies from all directions they stop trusting anything at all.
      • nickthegreek 2y ago
        The legislators who voted to ban it based on national security better stand up next week. Biden and Trump both look incredibly weak. America looks weak. Democracy looks weak.
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
      • DangitBobby 2y ago
        The US government lies according to plays out of the KGB playbook? How would that benefit it?
• mvdtnz 2y ago
  Between this and the Gaza ceasefire the outgoing administration is laying up political wins for Trump before he even takes office. An embarrassment for an administration that has completely failed to play the political game properly for years. And Biden was such a savvy operator before.
• mmooss 2y ago
  Through this law, Trump will consolidate control over social media. Facebook and Instagram, via Mark Zuckerberg, and X/Twitter via Elon Musk, are already in Trump's camp and are helping him. This law gives Trump leverage over TikTok - their access to the US market will likely depend on serving Trump's interests. Like X and Meta (and other SV companies) operating in other countries, they will comply with local oppression. It's incredible that the Democrats keep handing victory after victory to their opponents. (Trump also is gaining extreme influence over professional news media, including Fox News and the WSJ, of course, but also ABC News, possibly CBS News, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, the LA Times, and many more. It may be time to stop the lazy criticism of the NY Times and start taking them seriously; they could be the only island left in the storm, and will be subject to extreme attacks.)
• hcurtiss 2y ago
  By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda? I sometimes cannot believe it's those who so loudly cry about threats to "democracy" that simultaneously take such a cynical view of the democratic process. Rather than tackle the narratives substantively, they'd argue about who gets to manipulate the mob. It's just wild to me. If that's your view of the electorate, then the whole "democracy" thing is just a cover for elite power. Honestly, maybe there's some truth to that, but it sure flies in the face of the sanctity of voting and "democracy."
  • dmitrygr 2y ago
    > voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda Was this ever not the case?
    • Cumpiler69 2y ago
      It was always like that.
    • Waterluvian 2y ago
      This is the fundamental problem with American democracy and democracies all over the world. It only works if the voters are well informed, educated, and generally competent. Otherwise it’s just a manipulation game where someone can lie and lie and lie and be elected president. And at that late stage phase of democracy, who gets to manipulate these people better is who holds power.
      • 13415 2y ago
        That shouldn't be a problem, though. All it takes is to make sure that voters are informed, educated, and generally competent. On a side note, the same holds for market economy. Markets only work if consumers are informed, educated, and generally competent.
      • GenerocUsername 2y ago
• mixxit 2y ago
  what about all the american apps that have no service in china
  • Ylpertnodi 2y ago
    Interested. What about them?
    • bamboozled 2y ago
      I think the criticism is that China can buy a seat at our table through flattery, and likely other favours , but we can’t? So we’re potentially corrupted / compromised, and they aren’t.
• sega_sai 2y ago
  For the record -- the law for TikTok divestment was not passed on its own, but was instead included in the foreign aid (including Ukraine) package https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-what-next/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-... It is not clear if it would have passed if not that procedural trick... So one has to take this into account when considering 'bipartisan support' of the thing.
  • nickthegreek 2y ago
    >so one has to take this into account when considering ‘bipartisan support’ of the thing. I do not. I can hold a person accountable to their vote on this legislation. Their vote on this legislation caused the Supreme Court to release an opinion that affects every citizens 1st amendment rights. Now if they released a statement at the time condemning this while also talking about the importance of the aid they might have some leeway.
    • yreg 2y ago
      Accountable for sure, but it's less clear who was in favour and who was against the bill compared to if it wasn't bundled together.
    • sanderjd 2y ago
      How does the ruling affect the 1st amendment rights of US citizens? It entirely affects foreign business owners.
  • sillysaurusx 2y ago
    Thanks for this. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.
    • Karrot_Kream 2y ago
      Yes it was included in a foreign aid package to make it more palatable to Congress. Advocates of the bill on this site are not bringing that up because they support the bill.
• xyst 2y ago
  TT playing both the public and politicians for their gain. Well played. Biden admin wasn’t going to enforce ban but TT soft shutdown yesterday with message pandering to incoming admin (broadcasted to hundred millions of users). High suspicion of political theater. I wish ppl would see through this and realize this is yet another distraction to divide us via culture war.
• SCPlayz7000 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • pkkkzip 2y ago
    The security concerns about TikTok has merit but I'm surprised given the reputation of HN, nobody is connecting the dots to lobbying from Israel as a legitimate reason. In fact in all the past few threads about TikTok ban there is almost no mention of it. There have been numerous strides to push China as the sole reason but there is almost no real risk other than China knowing what you are into to show you more of the same content exactly how social medias are designed to work in America. Tiktok views with #freepalestine tags eclipsed #istandwithisrael by nearly 200 to 1 (videos with pro-Israel views got low single digit millions while videos with pro-Palestine views got nearly 200 times that) and THIS is a better explanation for the panic and why essentially lobbying for the ban of TikTok using China isn't a conspiracy theory (especially since it was discussed by a few US media outlets) and that this really in an attempt to keep young people exposed to an uncensored and unfiltered platform which inevitably causes them to grow more sympathetic with Palestine. It's censorship disguised as a national security threat for a totally unrelated motivator and once again, I'm disappointed more HN users especially those that have been on this website far longer than me were able to connect with all their wisdom they exude in other areas. https://x.com/5149jamesli/status/1880888299080098163 https://x.com/5149jamesli/status/1880888299080098163
    • alt227 2y ago
      > there is almost no real risk other than China knowing what you are into to show you more of the same content The risk here is China having the ability to sway and manipulate opinions of young minds in US over years by controlling what information they see on a daily basis. That is an extraordinary power which should not be underestimated.
      • pkkkzip 2y ago
        The algorithm simply shows you more of what people end up seeing and footages that otherwise would never be aired or shared on mainstream media and other US platforms (even X) is what is causing young minds to shift.
• lumost 2y ago
  This seems to imply that the president elect can make unilateral guarantees contravening US law. That’s a surprising outcome.
  • nickthegreek 2y ago
    If this stands, it certainly is. It’s a mockery of the whole of the system. Congress better act on overturning it post haste or enforcing it post haste.
    • samr71 2y ago
      They only have one option for the next two years: Impeach and remove. GOOD LUCK LMAO
      • HaZeust 2y ago
        To be fair, he's already been impeached twice; this wouldn’t be anything new to anybody.
        • LastTrain 2y ago
          "and remove"
          • HaZeust 2y ago
            Third time is the charm!
        • gnkyfrg 2y ago
          [dead]
      • SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
        Yes, the republican dominated congress and senate are certain to do that. It's very clear this puppy has no bottom.
    • 2y ago
• nottorp 2y ago
  Are they going to do this daily from now on? Turn off turn on, turn off turn on…
• TomK32 2y ago
  Just a quick reminder: Tik Tok (a service by a Chinese company) is still blocked in China.
• 13415 2y ago
  That's very sad news.
• kittikitti 2y ago
  The only thing I would have respected Trump for was the TikTok ban and now I don't have any. Trump loves fake news and brain rot, I was naive to think he would keep TikTok banned.
• afinlayson 2y ago
  So the person who’s not currently president saved a service turning off that didn’t need to be turned off… sounds like marketing more than anything.
• randerson 2y ago
  From China's perspective, I wonder if there's a workaround to sell 50% of TikTok to a US public company, and then through a few intermediaries purchase a large enough holding in _that_ company to give them a board seat or two.
  • SOTGO 2y ago
    I believe that they are required to have no more than 20% ownership by "foreign adversaries"
• wnevets 2y ago
  I'm curious to know how all of those pearl clutchers who got super mad about Twitter removing dick pics of Hunter Biden are doing.
• whoitwas 2y ago
  Alright. Hundreds or thousands of Chinese trackers on every military base in the world. Perfect.
  • mpalmer 2y ago
    The US military independently banned Tiktok on all personnel devices half a decade ago.
    • layer8 2y ago
      How do they enforce the ban?
      • bdangubic 2y ago
        by dishonorably discharging :)
    • whoitwas 2y ago
      That's good. So it should be banned on military bases, why not elsewhere?
• rwietter 2y ago
  But what about national security?? LMAO, political populism for the manipulable idiots.
• submeta 2y ago
  > „China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," This is grotesque. Israel is massively influencing US foreign and domestic policy via AIPAC and other lobby groups. AIPAC pays US politicians significant amounts of money, practically buys them. And they are not even registered as foreign entities, something JFK wanted to enforce before he was assassinated. So who is really manipulating US policy. And this is the exact group that put pressure on US universities to suppress free speech and on US policy makers to sent Israel weapons worth billions to kill thousands of Palestinian civilians. Now start your downvotes.
• nikkwong 2y ago
  The level of naiveté in this discussion is absolutely astonishing to me. People are seeming to forget that dysfunctional states (totalitarian, facist, the like) all are sprung from one common thread: control of the mind through propaganda. We already have evidence that the CCP or otherwise is manipulating Tiktok's algorithm to influence American minds [1]. This was one study, by one relatively small and underpowered organization. That's to say, there's probably a lot that we've yet to unearth about how the algorithm is manipulated; or how the CCP is planning to manipulate it to further their agenda at the expense of an American one. It's simply unbelievable to me that a sophisticated community like HN is against a ban in the context of all of the meddling our biggest rival, China, has done in our country to our direct disadvantage. Russia and China's main M.O. has been to divide us; to sow discontent. And they've been pretty successful. Who knows if Trump would have been elected without the Russian election interference. Trump has been a divisive figure who has reveled in destroying social order and he has done so successfully; the amount of hate and distrust for one's opposing political party is at an all-time high in the US, and it shows. This is to say that China and Russia have already been very successful in their attempts. In China Xi likes to say that "The East is rising, the West is falling". This is completely his M.O. and part of his plan. And now Trump, aware of all of this, is attempting to bring Tiktok back. Knowing everything he knows about it's use and potential future use of a propaganda machine. And knowing full-well that this is good for the East, and bad for domestic civil peace of mind and social order. And in the most Trumpian way possible, he doesn't care. And he's doing it for the most selfish reason possible--to feed his hero complex. Full. Fucking. Stop. This is such a glaring advertisement that he will do whatever he can to put his interests and reputation first over our country's and it's absolutely sickening. And the fact that there is actual debate and discussion around this issue on HN is just such a shocker. Again, this community should know better about how dangerous propaganda is, amplified by the fact that it's propaganda from our most rapacious, unethical and conniving enemy. An enemy that is planning wars of conquest, who's starving and torturing parts of its population. You want that enemy deciding what your kid spends an hour a day watching on their phone, while you're not paying attention? Yeah, good luck with that. https://networkcontagion.us/reports/the-ccps-digital-charm-offensive/ https://networkcontagion.us/reports/the-ccps-digital-charm-o...
  • samr71 2y ago
• svilen_dobrev 2y ago
  excuse my ignorance.. AFAI-remember years ago Trump was "fired" out of presidency before end of mandate, AND banned in biggest social networks. Now he is playing president before officially entering a mandate, AND around that those same social networks bosses are cringeing - just in case? That's two things, one that the exact boundaries of period of the mandate doesn't seem to matter, and second, the social-media BS-dancing thing.. so who's in charge ?
  • samr71 2y ago
    [flagged]
• TrackerFF 2y ago
  Anyway, how many TRUMP coins did this cost them?
• FpUser 2y ago
  The whole thing is starting to look like a circus.
• czhu12 2y ago
  Whether you support trump or not, the level of patronage that corporations seem to think is needed is disturbing. I've never seen companies stoking a presidents ego so publicly. If there comes a day in the future where the header of every major website starts says "Long Live Donald Trump", we will all be worse off for it. I've been extremely surprised how eagerly people have accepted this as a new normal. I can't imagine it's in the long term interest of billionaires to be labeled as oligarchs by half the country.
• ericyd 2y ago
  I'm not clear how Trump's assurances mean much in the face of a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. I guess we're already in an autocracy controlled by a person not even formally in power yet?
• elfbargpt 2y ago
  Clearly US lawmakers were convinced they could easily force ByteDance to divest by issuing an ultimatum. They were never prepared to actually see a ban of TikTok
• siliconunit 2y ago
  when the state if the nation is so bad that you have homeless everywhere, healthcare, housing and education are something you have to fight for, prisons are a business, suddenly another perspective seems more alluring, a modern Nordic socialism? putting a brake to unhinged late stage capitalism? or on the darker side, a promise of better conditions in 'some ways'...this is no national security risk, people are getting simply fed up with appalling state of the nation.
• jdlyga 2y ago
  The TikTok ban is worse for national security. It's trading in an imagined threat for a real threat. Though Xiaohongshu is having a cute little cultural exchange between Chinese people and Americans, there's so much more Chinese propaganda on that platform. I got recommended a few videos talking about Chinese/American wargames and how Americans were done for due to ultrasonic missiles and naval capabilities. You never see anything like that on TikTok. And the only reason Americans are exploring that platform is because of the TikTok ban.
  • AlwaysRock 2y ago
    "But what about!?!?" If a significant number of users were to join another foreign-owned platform with similar issues, it is likely that such platform would be banned as well, if it is not already banned under FACAA. TikTok is an issue in large part due to its popularity.
  • cbzbc 2y ago
    > I got recommended a few videos talking about Chinese/American wargames and how Americans were done for due to ultrasonic missiles and naval capabilities. You get those on youtube as well, for every combination of large power, I'm not sure why that its own should be a red flag.
  • 1209412comb 2y ago
    There are probably x10 America's propaganda on every social media sites, counting right-wing conservative politics alone.
    • cookiemonsieur 2y ago
      exactly. This is typical western hypocrisy. It's only propaganda because it's "them".
      • robertlagrant 2y ago
        > typical western hypocrisy How is it typical of Western countries, and how is it hypocrisy? US companies already do strange things to comply with China's requirements of them, for example.
• FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  Trump just issued a personal statement. Not even as president. It is still a Law. TikTok is still banned, the Supreme Court upheld it.
• nico 2y ago
  Not worth it going back to TT. Will just stay on RedNote
• BrenBarn 2y ago
  It's odd to me that people seem to be mostly viewing this as a free speech/democracy issue. To me it's more like if newspapers were printed with toxic ink or something. The negatives of TikTok have nothing to do with the speech expressed by the "creators" on the platform, but rather with the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose. It's true that this means all similar US-based things should be banned as well, but banning them isn't a matter of suppressing the speech and letting TikTok continue isn't a victory for free speech. It's just a victory for a gross sort of psychological pollution.
  • wildrhythms 2y ago
    >the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose What material effects are those?
    • speff 2y ago
      A diminished attention span. Assuming that's still considered a harmful effect.
    • dagss 2y ago
      There is by now "free speech" being published for every single combination of personal interests, demographic, and personal opinion and personality traits. If you wanted to push, say, white supremacy, to a trans mountain bike riding sci fi fan -- I am sure the content that will do that job is out there. Not with 100% certainty but enough to control a population. The question about controlling the population is only about picking the right reels to show to whom in what order. If you control the algorithmic firehose and control who sees what, you basically control the minds of the population. Not by explicit propaganda. Only by nudging and bumping content. People can make conscious decisions to not want their worldview defined by traditional sources, whether it is Fox News or The Daily Show or whatever. But with TikTok everyone gets something different and who knows how it is geared or rigged.
      • LinXitoW 2y ago
        As a left-ish person, TikTok is genuinely the only place I feel safe from braindead hate. EVERY OTHER platform I've interacted with has a fuckton of hate. I'm sure it exists in TikTok too, but at least the algorithm keeps those freaks far away from me. Can you establish somehow how a TikTok ban would help this situation?
• iLoveOncall 2y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong but TikTok was never forced to shut down for US users, it was just going to be removed from the stores and unable to be updated. Is it back on the stores or not? Because if not, nothing about the ban has changed, it's only that TikTok undid the decision that THEY took to shut down.
  • throwaway287391 2y ago
    Yes, this is correct -- TikTok's own "shutdown" was never required by law. I'm not in the US so I can't check for myself, but from googling it still seems to be removed from both the Apple and Google stores. If Apple/Google don't change their minds, TikTok won't be able to get any new US users, and won't be able to distribute updates to current US users. To continue using it in the current state, US users will have to keep the same phone and TikTok will have to continue supporting whatever last version(s) they're on indefinitely. (Modulo the few that might jump through VPN and app store locale setting hoops.) And I don't see how Apple/Google could change their minds: the ban bill comes with a 5 year statute of limitations, so regardless of how convincing the Trump administration is in their promise not to enforce the law, the next administration inaugurated in January 2029 would still be able to impose the penalties on Apple/Google for 4 years of non-compliance. Those penalties would be cripplingly massive even for the world's largest companies (I'm reading an estimate of $850B [0]). As far as I can tell, the only events that could end this are (1) TikTok finding and agreeing to sell to a US buyer or (2) Congress overturning the ban. It's odd that people are talking as though the saga is over now... [0] https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/19/24347325/tiktok-service-providers-penalties-apple-google-orcale-trump https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/19/24347325/tiktok-service-p...
• tempeler 2y ago
  This operation seems a bargain for buying Tiktok, nothing more. The main contradiction is preventing competition and being a monopoly. The government is trying to prevent more competition and create more confort zones for monopolies. They don't care about free speech. Finally, they are part of this business.
• Rapzid 2y ago
  I guess we know now why TikTok voluntarily went dark. Wonder which companies will be assured by TikTok's assurances there will be no consequences for helping them break the law. I just hope this causes congress to dig their heels in again. Almost can't believe what I'm seeing.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    In a sane world Congress would be furious at the executive overreach.
    • bsimpson 2y ago
      I don't remember the last time either party called out their colleagues for questionable use of executive orders, but to do so would require principles, and we haven't seen those in decades either.
  • rottencupcakes 2y ago
    It would only take 38% of Republicans in the Senate to vote with Democrats to remove Trump from office to get him out of politics for good. Defying the literal law on a matter of national security certainly qualifies as treason, or at least a vague "high crime and misdemeanor." Now that he's done his job for the Republicans (delivered a red wave), is there any benefit to keeping a kleptocratic monster in power? Should Congress just remove him from office and let JD Vance be president? Edit: Not sure why being downvoted. China bots?
    • lupusreal 2y ago
      I downvoted your comment because you're wrong. The constitution defines treason pretty clearly, you're not going to get a treason conviction without the US being in a legally and officially declared war with China. There has never been a treason conviction for any act committed after WW2, the last time the US was officially in a declared war. The Rosenberg's selling nuke secrets, the Walkers who decrypted Navy communications for the Soviets, those guys who went over to the Taliban or ISIS... all highly illegal but NONE of it was treason. Furthermore your comment is poorly thought out. Impeaching Trump would be very bad for the popularity of Republican senators, anybody should be aware of that regardless of how you personally feel about the people involved.
• ijidak 2y ago
  This whole charade has had me laughing since yesterday. The Caesars of Rome often played these public games to make themselves look magnanimous, while at the same time consolidating power and control. Julius Caesar's rise to power is one example.
  • phatfish 2y ago
    So Tiktok is the slave that got the thumbs up?
  • polalavik 2y ago
    sources?
• Havoc 2y ago
  Sounds like a great PR success. People love being on the in circle of something "naughty".
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• yreg 2y ago
  Is TikTok currently available in the US App Store and PlayStore? I can maybe understand ByteDance breaking the rules on a promise from the president elect that it will be alright. I would, however, never expect Apple or Google to take that liability (while not getting much out of it). edit: It seems that the TikTok app has indeed not been reinstated in the stores yet.
  • seanalltogether 2y ago
    Not only that but will American advertisers take the risk of allowing their ads to continue showing to American audiences, or for us based payment processors handle in app payments
• hsuduebc2 2y ago
  "It’s a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship." That hit's different from Chinese company. lol
  • fullshark 2y ago
    Words don't mean anything, they are just tools to win PR battles.
    • hsuduebc2 2y ago
      Couldn't agree more
• dankle 2y ago
  Sad
• spacecadet 2y ago
  I don't believe in conspiracy theories, I tend to believe most can be boiled down to power and/or stupidity. Which is what I see going on here, but if I were to attach a conspiracy theory to it- this was always the plan and now a portion of the voter base has been flipped. Well played by the Thiel, Musk, Zuck circle jerk.
• 9283409232 2y ago
  It blows my mind how easily people are swayed and how ByteDance is playing everyone like a fiddle. I need to walk into the ocean because this life ain't for me.
  • FartyMcFarter 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • khazhoux 2y ago
    After being a non-stop news and politics junkie the last 15+ years, I've gone beyond cold turkey. I stopped reading all political, U.S., and even world news the day after the election. Zero. Dropped reddit politics. I don't know who are Trump's cabinet picks. I assume Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock will be on the cabinet, but I don't know and don't care. On Nov 7 when I saw that not only did Trump win, but he won decisively, and I saw this is what the country wants, I decided that since I can't get rid of Trump's bullshit, I actually have full power to keep that bullshit from entering my personal reality. Whatever daily outrage and anger I would have felt since Nov 7, I don't have. My mind is relatively clear, and --surprise, surprise-- my life is unaffected. I plan to keep this up for 4 years. I assume at some point, I'll go to get a flu shot and be told vaccines are illegal. And if I notice suddenly a bunch of ads for iodine pills, I'll withdraw as much cash I can and get canned food and water and gasoline. I'll deal with it then. And in 2 years and 4 years I will go to the voting booth. But I'm powerless until then, except for what I allow into my life.
    • SGML_ROCKSTAR 2y ago
      Is there any way to still read all the political and world news while keeping your self from over-entertaining or internalizing it?
      • khazhoux 2y ago
        Even 5 seconds of Trump is enough to cause rage. I'm powerless to change what he says and does, but I'm only empowered to keep it away from me. My friend's house (and entire town) burned down, so I'm following that news. But even 2 minutes of reading Trump + Republicans saying the fires happened because the LAPD chief is a gay woman, and I had enough for the month.
• dingosity 2y ago
  meh. i always thought the real reason for the ban was EVERYONE in the states who has had to deal with ByteDance walks away from the experience thinking they've been dicked. Or at least everyone I've talked with. In my own experience, we signed a deal with US/TikTok and started spending money on things to uphold our part of the bargain. Then ByteDance steps in and says "no. we're canceling this contract," and we point out, "uh... hey bevis... we just spent money on your behalf," and their response is "sucks to be you." The case has been in California courts for about 5 years. We may get our money back before TikTok/US goes out of business.
• linuxhansl 2y ago
  Oh man. So much fuzz over a site that shares video snippets. Is it just me? I feel like I am witnessing some kind of end of US society. Fear disseminated by politicians and social media (pick whatever we are supposed to be afraid of this week.) Paired with an addictive desire to be relieved and distracted from this fear, in part from the same politicians/social media.
  • HaZeust 2y ago
    >I feel like I am witnessing some kind of end of US society. Have you been paying attention since covid? It's just terminal now.
• bearcobra 2y ago
  Despite my own feelings on the ban, this kind of royal court politics is the worst potential outcome. Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path. Not to mention the prosecutorial discretion may be creating massive liability that the new administration could use to extract favors from some of our largest tech companies.
  • slg 2y ago
    >Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path I don't understand why this is not the primary takeaway. Regardless of the specifics of this issue, it is objectively a huge power grab for a president to vow to not enforce a law that had bipartisan approval of both the legislative and judiciary branches.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • ternnoburn 2y ago
      The law has a provision permitting the President to grant 90 day exceptions. Trump has indicated he'll sign one tomorrow. This isn't going around the law, it's just the law as written. We can debate whether the law was good or bad, but this is an outcome the law directly supports.
      • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > law has a provision permitting the President to grant 90 day exceptions “A 1-time extension of not more than 90 days,” § 2(A)(3) [1]. [1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-17758/pdf/COMPS-17758.pdf#page=63 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-17758/pdf/COMPS-17...
        • ternnoburn 2y ago
• OhMeadhbh 2y ago
  Dang. Comments seem to be accumulating on this thread faster than they can be moderated. I'm not trying to call anyone names, but there seem to be A LOT of different political opinions and more than a few conspiracy theories. But who knows... maybe the conspiracy theorists are right... Just wanted to say thanks to the community for not being as flamey as one might expect for a comments section on the internet.
• _nickwhite 2y ago
  This is Trump playing chess. ByteDance, Greenland, The Gulf of Mexico, Panama Canal- All this, and he's not even President yet. It's all part of a bigger picture and a bigger plan with sizable levers. Some love this, others find it terrifying.
• gcanyon 2y ago
  Trump has clearly neutered both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. Welcome to a unitary government, with one god-emperor and no checks nor balances. It's going to be a wild two (few?) years.
  • bamboozled 2y ago
    If what you’re saying is true, why would there be a term limit at all?
    • gcanyon 2y ago
      Hence "few". Two if there are real elections in 2026, and the dems retake a majority. "few" if there aren't, or they don't -- in that case maybe 3-4 if term limits hold, or "who knows?" if as you say term limits don't apply, or Trump manages to put someone in place after him.
      • bamboozled 2y ago
        There is a cult following though, so even if the dems do well in 2026, I still think it's going to be hard to make sure the law is followed. I also don't really see the Democratic party making any proper steps to do well in 2026. Maybe they won't have to do anything but let's see.
  • gcanyon 2y ago
    Correction: it appears there is a 90-day presidential delay written into the law, so we're not quite at god-emperor status yet...
• mrlonglong 2y ago
  Executive orders cannot supersede or go against the law. The courts would quite rightly shut him down.
  • runlevel1 2y ago
    Yes, but the president is the head of the executive branch, which includes the DoJ. He can simply instruct them not to prosecute. That does leave companies like Oracle, who TikTok uses to host their content, in a weird position where they could be fined by future administrations for continuing to provide them service now. However, the law does give the president the ability to give them a one-time 90 day stay of execution. So, theoretically, they could repeal the law in the next 3 months.
• ForOldHack 2y ago
  The average Maga got the attention span of a braindamaged goldfish so obviously this is long forgotten.
  • gnkyfrg 2y ago
    [dead]
• seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  How does an executive order just pause a law passed by Congress? Does Trump think he really has that kind of authority?
  • kgeist 2y ago
    >The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• whalesalad 2y ago
  Nothing is real anymore.
• junto 2y ago
  > Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses “panem et circenses“, Juvenal 100AD
  • gnkyfrg 2y ago
    [dead]
• gradus_ad 2y ago
  The CCP has a propaganda and spying tool in the hands of 170M Americans. Yet the new Administration is more interested in playing politics than taking necessary steps to secure us against our primary adversary. It's not just Trump though. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats are taking the China threat seriously enough. The CCP must be destroyed.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• DavidPiper 2y ago
  We've been saying for quite some time that large multi-national companies have more power than entire democracies. I guess now we have proof. Republicans will see this as a political stunt that glorifies Donald Trump Democrats will see this as a political stunt that glorifies Donald Trump. China will see this as proof they have some control over the US citizenry.
• gonzo41 2y ago
  So laws don't matter now. That's a great trend to start on day 1.
• duxup 2y ago
  That shoutout has the vibe of some Banana Republic corruption… GOP in the US has constantly been fear mongering about social media bias, but what they really mean is they want their own ideas / bias and nobody else.
• mcintyre1994 2y ago
  > We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans These are literally just promises from Trump that these companies are relying on, not an actual change to the law, just a promise that he won't enforce it against them? Sounds like an utterly insane business decision that they'll regret as soon as they fall out with him. Each to their own I suppose. > The app was still unavailable for download from Apple’s and Google’s app stores. I guess I wonder if that's going to change specifically. They strike me as the two companies that would be most insane to take Trump at his word here.
  • tokioyoyo 2y ago
    It’s not an insane business decision, but the easiest way to garner support for your preferred candidate. Anyone who is 24/7 on TikTok (there are a lot of them) will now say how Trump saved the app. And kinda, technically, they’re not wrong (if you ignore the history).
    • mcintyre1994 2y ago
      Sure, but Trump will have the threat to enforce this law hanging over any of these companies for his entire term. That’s a terrible position to put yourself in. I just can’t believe any of these companies are stupid enough to trust him.
• dagss 2y ago
  I feel like the free speech enthusiasts are missing some imagination and failing to see the situation we are in post-algorithms. By now -- people have used their free speech to make reels for every possibly viewpoint convincing any possible demography about anything. The trail of reels needed to convert a mountain biker to a racist, or a Lego builder to an LBTQ ally, is out there. Making the free speech isn't the issue in 2025. The question is: Who sees what, and whose opinions are shifted in what direction. The big social networks controls the algorithms. Controlling who sees what is the new "speak", where you directly influence peoples minds simply by showing the right reels at the right moments. We have always had propaganda and media leaning in different directions. But people would know they are looking at Fox News or The Daily Show or Pravda. With TikTo... you find that people's opinion change very gradually and without perception over the course of half a year. Never seeing "TikTok" -- only seeing "people like you" (which can be a function of time, and evolve) sharing their heartfelt opinions. Not anything blatant of course. Blatant stuff does not change peoples opinions anyway. Just subtly bump some reels that has been proven to shift a demography in a certain direction. TikTok has the means to do it -- all the data about what reels cause what effect on what demographic, if they just wanted to. If TikTok is doing propaganda by subtly promoting some reels over others -- who would know? Why would they not be doing it and how can anyone know they are not already doing it? I am not saying this is definitely happening. But any discussion that isn't treating all the social networks as weapons of mass propaganda that CAN be used is awfully naive. And focusing on the "speech" thing seems so misplaced. It's all about who is heard and seen, and that is today all about power and algorithms.
  • lmm 2y ago
    > With TikTo... you find that people's opinion change very gradually and without perception over the course of half a year. Never seeing "TikTok" -- only seeing "people like you" (which can be a function of time, and evolve) sharing their heartfelt opinions. > Not anything blatant of course. Blatant stuff does not change peoples opinions anyway. Just subtly bump some reels that has been proven to shift a demography in a certain direction. > TikTok has the means to do it -- all the data about what reels cause what effect on what demographic, if they just wanted to. > If TikTok is doing propaganda by subtly promoting some reels over others -- who would know? Why would they not be doing it and how can anyone know they are not already doing it? > I am not saying this is definitely happening. But any discussion that isn't treating all the social networks as weapons of mass propaganda that CAN be used is awfully naive. Sure. But that's something that applies to every social network. Do you think e.g. Instagram doesn't subtly adjust which videos it shows you? They openly acknowledge that they limit the spread of videos that they consider "hate speech", and of course which videos they classify as hate speech is a politically dependent question. Or maybe you think Zuckerberg's interests are more aligned with what's good for you personally than the CCP's? Like with your examples of Fox News or The Daily Show or Pravda, if I can see all the networks then I at least can compare and consider. Closing my eyes to one of them makes me worse off, especially when it's the only one that's not run by a handful of very similar people with very similar interests.
• sensanaty 2y ago
  This was basically a 12 year old's plan for making Trump seem like a "champion" - and it somehow seems to be working, even in this comment section (assuming half the comments aren't just bots which I wouldn't discount personally). And then people in this thread apparently unironically don't see why banning foreign propaganda is a bad thing lol It's quite fascinating to see a nation's televised descent into absurd cronyism and corruption like this. You've got the prez-elect singlehandedly overturning laws that have just been passed a mere 24 hours ago, making shitcoin scams and getting rich off it, aligning all the psychotic techbros into his corner because they fear what kind of insane bullshit he's gonna pull off on them...
• ourmandave 2y ago
  Just google Salt Typhoon, (I'll wait), and then tell me you want the TikTok app on 102M+ US citizens devices.
  • ralfhn 2y ago
    I see nothing Israel hasn’t done yet we give them billions of dollars in aid.
    • talldayo 2y ago
      If China had America by the balls half as bad as Israel does, we'd be watching Biden and Trump take turns kissing Xi Jinping's feet on live television right now. It's besides the point and doesn't contribute to better foreign policy choices, just gives justification to the wrong ones.
      • GordonS 2y ago
        This is a valid point, and reminds me of those appalling scenes when Netanyahu received a standing ovation from the sycophantic US Congress, in the middle of his genocide of the Palestinian people [0]. And that scene in turn reminds me of old footage of Adolf Hitler being applauded by crowds. https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/a-standing-ovation-to-genocide https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/a-standing-ovatio...
  • hooverd 2y ago
    You're saying that this Chinese app has a US government mandated back door that the Chinese could use?
    • ClumsyPilot 2y ago
      Some 4D chess there, not sure who is playing whom at this point
  • mvdtnz 2y ago
    [flagged]
• replwoacause 2y ago
  The language surrounding this which basically heaps praise on Trump makes it seem like it was a condition he gave, that he must be given clear unambiguous credit, so he can go around saying he saved it, even though he was the one who signed an executive order in 2020 to ban it[0]. Anything to manipulate the American people’s perception of him. It feels like we’re living in Russia or North Korea with the stuff that goes on these days. Truly scary watching an oligarchy take shape realtime. [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executive-order-that-will-effectively-ban-use-of-tiktok-in-the-u-s https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...
• eunos 2y ago
  Well Dem and Biden already sealed their fate as the party that ban Bytedance universe (TikTok + Capcut), while Dear Leader Trump restored the services :). Let's see what the zoomers and millenials will say for next elections
• khalilsautchuk 2y ago
  [dead]
• Zak 2y ago
  This satisfies my curiosity about why TikTok didn't try to push app users to the website, which is not so easy to ban. They were always hoping to cozy up to Trump by offering him the opportunity to "save" TikTok. It's only for 90 days though, unless Trump decides to completely ignore his duty to enforce the law (a distinct possibility).
  • bcye 2y ago
    Couldn't the web version still pretty essily be enforceable via ISPs, etc.
    • Zak 2y ago
      My reading of the law does not require ISPs to block customers from accessing TikTok. US-based CDNs would be unable to provide hosting, but that just makes it less efficient, not inaccessible.
• xp84 2y ago
  All of this is really simple. Reasonable people know the CCP having full control of public opinion by having ultimate control of the algorithm that literally sets public opinion of everyone under 30… is problematic. When you consider that in a year or so they’re going to invade Taiwan and no doubt simultaneously get all of Gen Z and Alpha on their side with propaganda, this is horrible for anyone who doesn’t love dictatorships. BUT, Trump wants Gen Z to like him and that’s all there is to it. So he’s just going to come in on a white horse and “Save TikTok” — handing President Xi a gift on a silver platter. Because he doesn’t actually give a fuck about anything besides being popular.
• marbro 2y ago
  Congratulations to Trump to standing up for freedom and against all 9 Supreme Court justices that refused to enforce the First Amendment. People should be free to speak as much as they want on TikTok even though it's mostly useless chatter. In the Koramatsu decision of 1943, legalizing concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, there were 3 dissenting justices. I wish we had some this time.
• taimurkazmi 2y ago
  Gotta turn it off long enough for people to notice, but not long enough for people to find another platform.
• sheeshkebab 2y ago
  Enjoy your CCP dripfeed while it lasts. This crap is going byebye.
  • gnkyfrg 2y ago
    [dead]
• donohoe 2y ago
  This isn't about politics, just noting the facts and the hypocrisy... The Trump administration (back in 2020) were the ones that set this in motion. "Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok" August 6, 2020 https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-tiktok/ https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...
• throwawo 2y ago
  As I expected China wins no matter what
• bikamonki 2y ago
  Did the US president just told a private company to go ahead and break the law?
• grosales 2y ago
  The whole way Tiktok went black and the number of times it has mentioned President Trump in a positive note - to me - reinforces the idea that Tiktok is just a propaganda tool (in this case, for Trump). I would not be surprised if the whole act of going dark last night was because Trump told them that's how it needed to go so he could be a hero by Monday. The way most of our biggest companies and wealthiest are just lining up to do Trump's bidding is what I would expect from unstable 3rd world countries but never from the US (I know cause I came from one).
  • gnkyfrg 2y ago
    [dead]
• JimmaDaRustla 2y ago
  While jerking off Trump. We all know what's happening behind closed doors.
• Footnote7341 2y ago
  Foreign countries are already banned from owning TV stations in the United States so this is certainly not a speech issue. I dont think its clear that Trump can really save TikTok without passing a law through congress though.
• rapjr9 2y ago
  Large corporations blackmailing countries seems to be becoming more common. There was probably some of it going on throughout history (oil companies?, pharma?) but recently we've seen AT&T, Pornhub, TikTok, Google, Meta and others threaten to or actually stop services in areas that try to regulate them. There has been no legal reaction to this so far, rather companies "voluntarily" leave. Might we see large corporations seized in the future for blackmail?
  • tomnipotent 2y ago
    Private companies are not obligated to offer services, and in the US the government cannot compel private companies to do so (except rare circumstances). "We will stop offering services if X does not happen" is not coercive, it's an ultimatum. Companies should not be expected to operate in a market hostile to them.
    • gmueckl 2y ago
      What about privatized utilities then? What prevents e.g. electricity or phone companies from shutting down when they don't like some rules? It's a little more nuanced than "all or nothing".
      • taberiand 2y ago
        Good point. Nationalise essential services
      • alephnan 2y ago
        But TikTok is an entertainment, not utility, company
      • loa_in_ 2y ago
        Because it's endlessly profitable and very low risk to run a utility, the company's board is... unlikely to ever decide to do a stunt. For what payoff?
      • kelnos 2y ago
        Losing TikTok for a few hours or a day is perhaps going to make TikTok users more angry at the government than TikTok. Losing electricity or phone service for a day is going to make people more angry at the utility or phone company, regardless of why the shutdown has happened. And if a utility threatened to shut down service instead of complying with a new government regulation, you can bet the government would immediately jail anyone involved in that decision.
• karmajuney 2y ago
  While it’s back in the US, it seems to be a separate version from the rest of the world. My account is European and I can no longer log in within the US without a VPN out of the country. My GFs account is American and she can login but has lost access to some accounts and the ability to watch livestreams which my version of the app still has. I wonder if the 13 hour “outage” was for a larger scale data migration for a separate US version
  • blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    If so, all the more reason to distrust and ban this product. They’ve clearly not been honest with the public.
  • kshacker 2y ago
    I also can not see livestreams. It says "Unstable Network Connection". And I have 2 separate "air gapped" phones and TT accounts - no shared details and both behave the same. There are lots of conspiracy theories online. However, I think it is just that the process of bringing the stack back up may be difficult. They also have a huge shopping network, that has also been down, and there are emails/communications to shops saying they are working on fixing it. Also, when I take a link from TikTok and post it in a downloader app, it no longer works since the URL is broken. Maybe some microservices did not come back up (outage), or maybe they were knowingly compromised as part of the extension deal. While I can see that Lives can not be censored, I do not know the reason for shopping to be disabled, so I suspect it is an outage. [ Actually shopping is also "live", so maybe that's why ] We will probably find out over the coming days.
    • kshacker 2y ago
      Today morning, lives are back, link sharing (downloads) are working. Have not seen shops yet in 2 minutes of scrolling
      • karmajuney 2y ago
        Glad lives are back, I was actually inspecting the traffic using my PiHole from when my GF's US tiktok was browsing and when my European account was attempting to connect. Both of them his a CDN within the US but after that it looks like we had traffic going to different versions. Her's was routing to a tiktokv.us while mine was sending traffic to tiktokv. I'm not sure if this has been in place before or if I'm just realizing now but I believe a split-brain scenario is pretty likely.
• alkonaut 2y ago
  Where does this leave US federal privacy regulations? What can an app do with the data of US users?
  • Synaesthesia 2y ago
    That was never the issue, if it was, the US would simply force certain privacy legislation upon companies, like the EU did. It's about the global monopoly on tech products that the US has, which is obviously threatened by Chinese competitors. You saw the exact same thing with Huawei.
    • alkonaut 2y ago
      Even if you think this is about protectionism rather than state sponsored espionage (I don't think many would agree with you) your comment makes little sense. Because if you wanted to enforce that kind of protectionism you would still do it under the guise of privacy or security. Meaning you would simply impose such laws that would make it impossible for TikTok to operate, while at the same time being good for privacy.
      • Synaesthesia 2y ago
        >Because if you wanted to enforce that kind of protectionism you would still do it under the guise of privacy or security. Meaning you would simply impose such laws that would make it impossible for TikTok to operate, while at the same time being good for privacy. Well that's exactly what happened. Except it's just a pretense that it's about security or privacy, which is a very easy thing to do.
        • alkonaut 2y ago
          So Ericsson was banned together with Huawei I take it, and some non-Chinese apps are being investigated similar to TikTok? No. This whole ”it’s just protectionism” doesn’t hold water for one second. Huawei has been banned in other places as well, and no other companies in the telecom were simultaneously banned. It’s just not good policy to build critical infrastructure using hardware from a Chinese company.
• ulfw 2y ago
  Utterly pathetic like that whole "new" country and it's government.
• matt3210 2y ago
  USA politics is pretty much a joke or reality tv these days so anything can happen. Not a presidential crypto rug pull though, tHaT wIlL nEvEr HaPeN.
• deleted 2y ago
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• ornornor 2y ago
  President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho to the rescue!! For those who haven’t seen it yet, go watch Idiocracy from Mike Judge. It’s a preview of the years to come.
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  • leokennis 2y ago
    Money quote from President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho to cement how he and Trump align on values: > Come on, scro! Don't be a pussy! Besides, you do a kick-ass job and you get a full pardon.
    • simianparrot 2y ago
      Remind me again who pardoned his own son.
      • hansihe 2y ago
        After the precedent around pardons set by his predecessor I'll give him that one. At least Biden let the process play out before issuing the pardon so the public got to know all the details.
        • throwaway_e66m 2y ago
          > At least Biden let the process play out before issuing the pardon so the public got to know all the details. That sentence didn't age well. Biden preemptively pardons Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley and Jan. 6 committee members https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-preemptively-pardons-anthony-fauci-mark-milley-jan/story?id=117878813 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-preemptively-pardons-a... President Biden pardons family members in final minutes of presidency https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-family-members-final-minutes-presidency/story?id=117893348 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-fami...
• throwaway199956 2y ago
  Recent weeks frankly not a good show by US Judiciary. The series of Trump indictments all fizzling out, because judges didn't want to indict an on coming president. And on this particular matter, Supreme Court 'unsigned' opinion felt confused even though it is termed unanimous. At places it seemed to complain of the paucity of time/scope to consider all parts of the matter more seriously, and at the end even expressed ambivalence about what is going to happen next even. Frankly bit of shoddy-ness/confused signalling from Judiciary and Supreme Court. Perhaps it would have been better to just delay the matter by issuing an interim extension and reconsider the issue taking into account the views of the new administration. This was no urgent matter that a few days delay would have mattered.
• alex_young 2y ago
  It’s still unavailable in the Apple App Store.
• rvba 2y ago
  Trumo also had thr option to kill Huawai and didnt. He stopped the sanctions just before the company bankrupted. Now they know to make own OS
• chrisco255 2y ago
  I suspect the U.S. will end up getting its way and TikTok will be divested of foreign ownership by the time this all shakes out.
• drooopy 2y ago
  Have we reached the point where we use gatorade to water our crops yet?
  • xigency 2y ago
    Worse. We have plastics in our blood from drinking gatorade.
• leric 2y ago
  [dead]
• _7acn 2y ago
  I think apps like TikTok or YouTube Shorts literally brainwash people. It’s one of the dumbest things ever invented on the Internet, yet incredibly addictive at the same time.
  • zo1 2y ago
    100% agree on this and go further; it rots their brain. We have to have the societal courage and guts to admit that it is conceptually the same as things like drugs/alcohol/smoking. Then again, we lost that battle with misogynistic, language-rotting, and violent rap music because we were too worried about being called racists, so there might not be hope we'll do better this time around.
    • zht 2y ago
      Do you think rap music has had more of an impact on society or democracy than TikTok or YouTube shorts or just Facebook?
      • zo1 2y ago
        I'd be pulling something out of thin air, but my opinion is that yes so far it has. Facebook and TikTok, and other social media, has served as an amplification mechanism for various things, including rap music. But at this point, we also have a separate category of things that pretty much on their own are having a negative effect on society. That would be things like TikTok (including Instagram Reels, and Youtube Shorts). The fact that they're not trying to come up with a new UI paradigm, or discovery mechanism is very telling. They keep focusing on semi-random swipe-directed discovery, and that tells me they're not interested in making the best content available to you as the interested-consumer. They want you wasting time and generating N-counts of redundant ad views/impressions/things before finding that one thing you wanted or might find interesting. Youtube is probably the best at at-least trying to not force you to swipe (when watching normal videos). But even there, we can see how much people complain about "The Feed" or "The Algorithm". With all of Google's money and effort, they couldn't (or chose not to) find a better way at matching viewers with good content.
    • 2y ago
• toyetic 2y ago
  Does anyone know what the actual bill that got signed was. All I can find is a bill that was passed by the house but stuck in the senate
  • throwaway287391 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Foreign_Adversary_Controlled_Applications_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Fore... It passed in the House 352-65, and in the Senate 79-18, both in April 2024.
• alfiedotwtf 2y ago
  The US-shilling in this thread is unbelievable. It’s almost as if half of these people have never heard of who Snowden was and don’t believe the US has ever spied on foreign nationals :headslap;
• openplatypus 2y ago
  So America really is for sale, and there are no exceptions.
  • HumblyTossed 2y ago
    Trump is definitely for sale.
• HumblyTossed 2y ago
  After they pumped $20B into Trump’s meme coin.
• deleted 2y ago
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• BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  Everyone using the bipartisan consensus after classified briefings as evidence why the ban is a good idea is too young to remember 2003.
  • user3939382 2y ago
    “The word bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.” — George Carlin
• theshrike79 2y ago
  There's anecdotal evidence that something funky is going on in the background. More so than usual. A handful of very prominent creators critical of the US (or other) governments have had their accounts just disappear. The algorithm is also showing decidedly different type of content.
  • myko 2y ago
    This is just the beginning. Not sure America will survive another 4+ years of this clown.
    • user3939382 2y ago
      “America won’t survive this presidency! If you don’t vote in this election you won’t get the chance to vote again!” Been hearing that shit since I started paying close attention to presidential races with the first run of Bush in 2000.
      • talldayo 2y ago
        I quite dislike the hysterical rhetoric too. That being said, I get why people ascribe it to Donald Trump. I will never forget turning on the TV on Janurary 6th to see the President of the United States inciting a riot on government property that had already killed multiple people. This is going to be a pretty miserable administration and I expect a complete reprieve of the "stop the steal" bitching and moaning that we sat through the first time around.
  • squigz 2y ago
    What accounts?
• yurlungur 2y ago
  Ha, I guess Trump is the pro business president after all since he's so transparently open for business himself. At least as of now it seems Bytedance outsmarted the detractors.
• yalogin 2y ago
  The US presidency fully devolved into a mafia this time around, no more mincing words or operating behind the scenes. Just like a mafia don demands, all fealty should be in public and fully subservient, no half measures. Till now, commenting or criticizing someone was fair game, not anymore. Musk and trump have shown they can petty and vindictive. So no more commenting in public too. Not sure what this does to the press. Over time people will be trained to think free press is bad too.
  • Thorrez 2y ago
    >Till now, commenting or criticizing someone was fair game, not anymore. Musk and trump have shown they can petty and vindictive. Tons of people criticize both of them. In fact, both Musk and Trump have publicly criticized each other, and have now made up.
    • bgun 2y ago
      Republicans have learned to weaponize attention far better than Democrats. Negative attention is still attention, and where Democrats shrink from "gaffes" or criticism, Republicans just recognize that public criticism is still a form of attention. Even among each other. Whoever gets the most eyeballs, top stories, and headlines for longest wins this game. Vicious, vindictive, petty, nonsensical, random, and trolling tactics are all strategically useful in this media landscape.
      • outside1234 2y ago
        Republicans have the benefit of not having guilt around saying things that are patently not true while the Democrats are still trying to act within norms. It is asymmetrical warfare on the truth.
        • cooper_ganglia 2y ago
          It astounds me that anyone is capable of sincerely believing this.
• lenerdenator 2y ago
  It's so awesome to see the executive branch, in a move for clout, decide to ignore a law passed by bipartisan action in Congress, almost by dictorial fiat.
  • idhegeu 2y ago
    Don't forget that it was also unanimously upheld by the supreme court! Maybe this will be the hill he dies on. I can't bring myself to believe that he'll be allowed to literally become the day 1 dictator he that he promised he would.
    • lenerdenator 2y ago
      m8 the only hill he'll die on is one of gold. The stooges have officially fallen in line in all of the places that matter: Congress, state houses, and federal courts.
• deleted 2y ago
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• Owlettotoo 2y ago
  Keeping this up and we might need to start introducing version management tools to the U.S. government.