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Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director. Why? The nominal reason for all this is that we didn't want a Chinese company controlling an import

Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director. Why? The nominal reason for all this is that we didn't want a Chinese company controlling an important social media outlet. I don't love that reasoning, but fine, whatever. So they're forcibly selling it to an American company. Which should solve the problem, right? Are we going to be putting government-appointed directors on all social media companies? Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese? Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it?

yibg 1y ago
Remember though, it's only bad when the other guy does it. We don't want Chinese government involvement in TikTok, but we do want US government involvement. /s
- groggler 1y ago
  The "Be all you can be" slogan requires more than just a great firewall that China should pay for, it needs a constant vigil to protect it from German nihilists.
  - gorgoiler 1y ago
    Build a [fire]wall and make China pay for it is an amusing — if bleak — joke. Thank you :) What do you mean though by protection from “German nihilists”? Is that a satirical name you imagine the US government might use for the EU?
    - groggler 1y ago
      The timing of the slogan change is not really ideal for blaming German nihilists but it's all a while ago around when the big Lebowski surfaced that very serious threat.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWIII_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWIII_(album)
    - mikestew 1y ago
      Perhaps a sideways reference to old movies? “Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.”[0] Or maybe just a direct reference to Strauss, I dunno. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464759&ref_=ext_shr_lnk https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464759&r...
- glenstein 1y ago
  I mean I do want the world's most influential social media app to be within the jurisdiction of a non-authoritarian state, yes.
  - komali2 1y ago
    The USA is also an authoritarian State, it just has better marketing. I live in Taiwan. I'm no fan of the CPC. But if you zoom out a bit, it's kinda hard to distinguish the two beyond Americans winning global cultural victory (CPC propaganda is still goofy and obvious). Point at tiananmem square, an atrocious massacre of their own citizenry. The USA has done this - it has locked its citizens in concentration camps, supported their enslavement and recaptured the ones that managed to free themselves, bombed wealthy neighborhoods of the wrong race, had soldiers fire upon striking workers and peaceful protesters. America just has no Tank Man photo and much more subtle media relations - ostensibly free media but in reality controlled through the mutual interests of the billionaire owners of the media conglomerates and the multi millionaire politicians. The CPC did a genocide in Xinjiang. They were very good at information control here, it's almost impossible to find even an image from the inside of one of their concentration camps. The USA funded a genocide in Palestine, but it can maintain a sort of non culpability. At any point in time the USA can turn on its Israeli allies, and my cynical expectation is that when the government becomes flagrantly fascist enough they'll just blame the Jews and call it done. But, until now, they've maintained an extraordinarily effective marketing campaign propping up Israel as a bastion of freedom and democracy in a demonic environment,values it's managed to market across the entire world that isn't the PRC or cuba or Venezuela, to where people in other countries will say "I can do what I want, it's a free country" even in countries where that really isn't the case e.g. for speech in the UK for example. In actuality it's a more racialized pitch - the Israelis are more credibly white, the Muslims are, well, Muslims. Or Brown. Whichever. But they have this massive marketing apparatus (decades of film and TV) smoothing over these racialized concepts into "freedom and democracy vs savagery and chaos," whereas the CPC with their racialized version just had Han and Normal vs Muslim and Kinda Weird (maybe dangerous!). A much more despicable pitch on the surface which is why they didn't get away with a televised genocide the way America and Israel got away with decades of apartheid against Palestine. Anyway in summary if we take a look at all the bad the CPC vs the USA have done in their lifetimes, idk man at best the scales at balanced, worse case I think America has been worse for the world overall. I would be curious if people that disagree would be willing to do so with the context of American imperialism in mind - interfering in south America and the middle East for example. Is it still better than a country that has one imperialist action (Tibet) and a genocide under its belt?
zamadatix 1y ago
It's an interesting question, but the information we have so far doesn't seem to be enough to give a meaningful answer yet. E.g. is it something like "one person appointed to oversee the full terms of the transition are kept" or "one person appointed always to make sure TikTok aligns with the government". I'm not necessarily a fan of either... but to vastly different levels.
kelnos 1y ago
Because Trump wants a proxy so he can continue to influence the direction TikTok takes. He wants easier access to data so he can go after his political opponents, as well as get things censored he doesn't like. Of course, this would all be possible without someone on the board, but it can't hurt, and likely will help.
- LadyCailin 1y ago
  If TikTok removes something, would the fact that there’s a government representative on the board give standing for a first amendment claim? Normally private companies aren’t required to furnish you with first amendment rights, but if one could argue that, if not for the board representative, they might not have prevented that speech, then perhaps you would have standing.
  - wolfcola 1y ago
    Yeah, the supreme court will get right on that
    - epistasis 1y ago
      As soon as the appointee is appointed by a Democratic politician, at least.
      - jfengel 1y ago
        That won't help. The count is currently 6 Republicans to 3 Democrats. The party isn't an absolute predictor of how they'll vote, but it's pretty close. It would take a minimum of two Republicans to retire, and be replaced by Democrats, to change the partisan balance. The oldest justice is Clarence Thomas, but the next two are both Democrats. Everybody else is under 70 and will not retire for a minimum of a decade.
        epistasis 1y ago
        I'm talking about the appointee to the board of the US-TikTok; I doubt the Supreme Court will have any objection until it is favorable for their partisan politics. (I hope I am wrong, but the past years have made me quite cynical)
staticautomatic 1y ago
Seems obvious to me that this is so the government can force the platform to silence users who are critical of the government.
- slg 1y ago
  You're right, it seems obvious. Considering the number of self-professed "free speech absolutists" I have encountered on this site over the years, I'm surprised at how much benefit of the doubt others are giving this.
  - Pxtl 1y ago
    I'm not. The last few years have made it very clear what the actual political goals of the VC-tech world are. I was as disappointed as anybody, but I'm not surprised anymore.
    - slg 1y ago
      I was trying to be more neutral, but after some thought, this isn't the time for that. My "surprise" was more than a bit sarcastic. Between this and the FCC going after Kimmel, now is the last chance I will give for anyone claiming to care about free speech to prove they weren't lying. There's no plausible deniability anymore, free speech is unambiguously under attack.
      - hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
        What’s even more hilarious are all the anti cancel culture warriors from the past few years going on about how the Kimmel situation isn’t cancel culture. Especially since this is probably the only incident in the last couple of decades where the cancelation was a result of the government threatening consequences unless a specific individual was not canceled.
        lenkite 1y ago
        Cancel culture has been firmly adopted by all political sides now. It is simply too powerful and effective a weapon to be not used.
glenstein 1y ago
>Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it? Well, yes, for starters. I think there's a pretty strong consensus from people on all sides that there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one. It's the beneficiary of powerful network effects, it created those effects for itself with a superior app, but nevertheless it is a distinguishing feature. I also would say it's culturally positioned perhaps the best of any major social media app over the present and near term. And in its current ownership it's required by statute to comply with Chinese national security data requests. And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
- mullingitover 1y ago
  > there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one. I really have to disagree at this point. Meta has all the money in the world to throw at this, and inference isn't rocket surgery. I think Meta's algorithm caught up a couple years ago, if anything it's even more addictive. Tiktok is simply riding on first mover status, plus it's a Coke/Pepsi thing, a large segment finds Meta properties distasteful for all the obvious reasons.
  - 0000000000100 1y ago
    I agree (not OP). The difference in addictiveness between the three big boys (Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) grows smaller with every passing year as their back-catalog of content grows. Pretty much everyone I know consumes TikTok style content these days. I personally have blocked myself from this stuff via deleting the Insta, YouTube and I even wrote a TamperMonkey script to block myself from getting trapped down the rabbit hole. Self shout out: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/534969-begone-youtube-shorts https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/534969-begone-youtube-shor...
  - wnc3141 1y ago
    I think it's more the product design is far more distilled for popular (and addictive) short term content. From ad placement to UI to the format of solely being a frictionless video platform with mostly anonymous users.
nujabe 1y ago
That is a seat reserved for AIPAC.
ivape 1y ago
They don’t want you scrolling through insert_controversial_topic at break neck pace. The bandwidth on TikTok in terms of getting a visual out is extremely wide and fast.
Bombthecat 1y ago
You know the answer lol
palmotea 1y ago
> Are we going to be putting government-appointed directors on all social media companies? That wouldn't be a bad thing. How good has unchecked Zuckerberg been for us, really? > Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese? Or the one where there's some level to force on them, like here. If Zuckerberg starts needing government cash to keep Facebook going, I'd expect a similar deal.
- seattle_spring 1y ago
  Unchecked Zuckerberg is still preferable to anyone appointed by the current admin.
- knome 1y ago
  >That wouldn't be a bad thing The government should be the government, and corporations should be corporations. Nothing good will come of having them bleed together. Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both.
  - Vegenoid 1y ago
    > Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both. No, not for the good of both - for the good of the people. It is demonstrably beneficial for those in power in government and megacorps to conspire and consolidate that power, it enables them to further control and extract from the populace. It is the people that should be invested in keeping them separate.
  - palmotea 1y ago
    > The government should be the government, and corporations should be corporations. Nothing good will come of having them bleed together. > Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both. I'm not convinced of that anymore. The problem is the government is so weak and slow: the corporations can implement some bad decision before the government has a chance to notice and regulate. There needs to be more stakeholders with power at the corporate decision-making table than just the shareholders and their representatives. You need workers there, you needs someone to speak for the interests of the country as a whole, etc.
Yeul 1y ago
Pushing trad wife and Christ is king content to young people is worth it. Propaganda works.

yibg 1y ago

Remember though, it's only bad when the other guy does it. We don't want Chinese government involvement in TikTok, but we do want US government involvement. /s

groggler 1y ago
The "Be all you can be" slogan requires more than just a great firewall that China should pay for, it needs a constant vigil to protect it from German nihilists.
- gorgoiler 1y ago
  Build a [fire]wall and make China pay for it is an amusing — if bleak — joke. Thank you :) What do you mean though by protection from “German nihilists”? Is that a satirical name you imagine the US government might use for the EU?
  - groggler 1y ago
    The timing of the slogan change is not really ideal for blaming German nihilists but it's all a while ago around when the big Lebowski surfaced that very serious threat.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWIII_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWIII_(album)
  - mikestew 1y ago
    Perhaps a sideways reference to old movies? “Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.”[0] Or maybe just a direct reference to Strauss, I dunno. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464759&ref_=ext_shr_lnk https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464759&r...
glenstein 1y ago
I mean I do want the world's most influential social media app to be within the jurisdiction of a non-authoritarian state, yes.
- komali2 1y ago
  The USA is also an authoritarian State, it just has better marketing. I live in Taiwan. I'm no fan of the CPC. But if you zoom out a bit, it's kinda hard to distinguish the two beyond Americans winning global cultural victory (CPC propaganda is still goofy and obvious). Point at tiananmem square, an atrocious massacre of their own citizenry. The USA has done this - it has locked its citizens in concentration camps, supported their enslavement and recaptured the ones that managed to free themselves, bombed wealthy neighborhoods of the wrong race, had soldiers fire upon striking workers and peaceful protesters. America just has no Tank Man photo and much more subtle media relations - ostensibly free media but in reality controlled through the mutual interests of the billionaire owners of the media conglomerates and the multi millionaire politicians. The CPC did a genocide in Xinjiang. They were very good at information control here, it's almost impossible to find even an image from the inside of one of their concentration camps. The USA funded a genocide in Palestine, but it can maintain a sort of non culpability. At any point in time the USA can turn on its Israeli allies, and my cynical expectation is that when the government becomes flagrantly fascist enough they'll just blame the Jews and call it done. But, until now, they've maintained an extraordinarily effective marketing campaign propping up Israel as a bastion of freedom and democracy in a demonic environment,values it's managed to market across the entire world that isn't the PRC or cuba or Venezuela, to where people in other countries will say "I can do what I want, it's a free country" even in countries where that really isn't the case e.g. for speech in the UK for example. In actuality it's a more racialized pitch - the Israelis are more credibly white, the Muslims are, well, Muslims. Or Brown. Whichever. But they have this massive marketing apparatus (decades of film and TV) smoothing over these racialized concepts into "freedom and democracy vs savagery and chaos," whereas the CPC with their racialized version just had Han and Normal vs Muslim and Kinda Weird (maybe dangerous!). A much more despicable pitch on the surface which is why they didn't get away with a televised genocide the way America and Israel got away with decades of apartheid against Palestine. Anyway in summary if we take a look at all the bad the CPC vs the USA have done in their lifetimes, idk man at best the scales at balanced, worse case I think America has been worse for the world overall. I would be curious if people that disagree would be willing to do so with the context of American imperialism in mind - interfering in south America and the middle East for example. Is it still better than a country that has one imperialist action (Tibet) and a genocide under its belt?

zamadatix 1y ago

It's an interesting question, but the information we have so far doesn't seem to be enough to give a meaningful answer yet. E.g. is it something like "one person appointed to oversee the full terms of the transition are kept" or "one person appointed always to make sure TikTok aligns with the government". I'm not necessarily a fan of either... but to vastly different levels.

kelnos 1y ago

Because Trump wants a proxy so he can continue to influence the direction TikTok takes. He wants easier access to data so he can go after his political opponents, as well as get things censored he doesn't like. Of course, this would all be possible without someone on the board, but it can't hurt, and likely will help.

LadyCailin 1y ago
If TikTok removes something, would the fact that there’s a government representative on the board give standing for a first amendment claim? Normally private companies aren’t required to furnish you with first amendment rights, but if one could argue that, if not for the board representative, they might not have prevented that speech, then perhaps you would have standing.
- wolfcola 1y ago
  Yeah, the supreme court will get right on that
  - epistasis 1y ago
    As soon as the appointee is appointed by a Democratic politician, at least.
    - jfengel 1y ago
      That won't help. The count is currently 6 Republicans to 3 Democrats. The party isn't an absolute predictor of how they'll vote, but it's pretty close. It would take a minimum of two Republicans to retire, and be replaced by Democrats, to change the partisan balance. The oldest justice is Clarence Thomas, but the next two are both Democrats. Everybody else is under 70 and will not retire for a minimum of a decade.
      - epistasis 1y ago
        I'm talking about the appointee to the board of the US-TikTok; I doubt the Supreme Court will have any objection until it is favorable for their partisan politics. (I hope I am wrong, but the past years have made me quite cynical)

staticautomatic 1y ago

Seems obvious to me that this is so the government can force the platform to silence users who are critical of the government.

slg 1y ago
You're right, it seems obvious. Considering the number of self-professed "free speech absolutists" I have encountered on this site over the years, I'm surprised at how much benefit of the doubt others are giving this.
- Pxtl 1y ago
  I'm not. The last few years have made it very clear what the actual political goals of the VC-tech world are. I was as disappointed as anybody, but I'm not surprised anymore.
  - slg 1y ago
    I was trying to be more neutral, but after some thought, this isn't the time for that. My "surprise" was more than a bit sarcastic. Between this and the FCC going after Kimmel, now is the last chance I will give for anyone claiming to care about free speech to prove they weren't lying. There's no plausible deniability anymore, free speech is unambiguously under attack.
    - hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
      What’s even more hilarious are all the anti cancel culture warriors from the past few years going on about how the Kimmel situation isn’t cancel culture. Especially since this is probably the only incident in the last couple of decades where the cancelation was a result of the government threatening consequences unless a specific individual was not canceled.
      - lenkite 1y ago
        Cancel culture has been firmly adopted by all political sides now. It is simply too powerful and effective a weapon to be not used.

glenstein 1y ago

>Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it? Well, yes, for starters. I think there's a pretty strong consensus from people on all sides that there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one. It's the beneficiary of powerful network effects, it created those effects for itself with a superior app, but nevertheless it is a distinguishing feature. I also would say it's culturally positioned perhaps the best of any major social media app over the present and near term. And in its current ownership it's required by statute to comply with Chinese national security data requests. And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.

mullingitover 1y ago
> there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one. I really have to disagree at this point. Meta has all the money in the world to throw at this, and inference isn't rocket surgery. I think Meta's algorithm caught up a couple years ago, if anything it's even more addictive. Tiktok is simply riding on first mover status, plus it's a Coke/Pepsi thing, a large segment finds Meta properties distasteful for all the obvious reasons.
- 0000000000100 1y ago
  I agree (not OP). The difference in addictiveness between the three big boys (Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) grows smaller with every passing year as their back-catalog of content grows. Pretty much everyone I know consumes TikTok style content these days. I personally have blocked myself from this stuff via deleting the Insta, YouTube and I even wrote a TamperMonkey script to block myself from getting trapped down the rabbit hole. Self shout out: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/534969-begone-youtube-shorts https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/534969-begone-youtube-shor...
- wnc3141 1y ago
  I think it's more the product design is far more distilled for popular (and addictive) short term content. From ad placement to UI to the format of solely being a frictionless video platform with mostly anonymous users.

nujabe 1y ago

That is a seat reserved for AIPAC.

ivape 1y ago

They don’t want you scrolling through insert_controversial_topic at break neck pace. The bandwidth on TikTok in terms of getting a visual out is extremely wide and fast.

Bombthecat 1y ago

You know the answer lol

palmotea 1y ago

> Are we going to be putting government-appointed directors on all social media companies? That wouldn't be a bad thing. How good has unchecked Zuckerberg been for us, really? > Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese? Or the one where there's some level to force on them, like here. If Zuckerberg starts needing government cash to keep Facebook going, I'd expect a similar deal.

seattle_spring 1y ago
Unchecked Zuckerberg is still preferable to anyone appointed by the current admin.
knome 1y ago
>That wouldn't be a bad thing The government should be the government, and corporations should be corporations. Nothing good will come of having them bleed together. Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both.
- Vegenoid 1y ago
  > Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both. No, not for the good of both - for the good of the people. It is demonstrably beneficial for those in power in government and megacorps to conspire and consolidate that power, it enables them to further control and extract from the populace. It is the people that should be invested in keeping them separate.
- palmotea 1y ago
  > The government should be the government, and corporations should be corporations. Nothing good will come of having them bleed together. > Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both. I'm not convinced of that anymore. The problem is the government is so weak and slow: the corporations can implement some bad decision before the government has a chance to notice and regulate. There needs to be more stakeholders with power at the corporate decision-making table than just the shareholders and their representatives. You need workers there, you needs someone to speak for the interests of the country as a whole, etc.

Yeul 1y ago

Pushing trad wife and Christ is king content to young people is worth it. Propaganda works.