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Abu Dhabi royal family to take stake in TikTok US
- SirFatty 1y agoBut hey, at least we've removed the China threat!
- tru3_power 1y agoDid we really though?
- sybercecurity 1y agoIt's getting to the point where the news should be who isn't in on the deal.
- potato3732842 1y agoGotta have enough parties in on it so that there's no one party responsible enough to face consequences when it all goes tits up.
- FridayoLeary 1y ago[flagged]
- bix6 1y ago> it’s not going to be used as a propaganda weapon against our fellow citizens. Yeah sure
- 20after4 1y agoDing ding ding. This is the real goal. They want to weaponize it against us. Far more so even than China did.
- tobylane 1y agoIn reading the quote from Vance I was starting to think that American's data is only safe in the hands of European companies. The quantity of propaganda is going up with the new owners, and this royal family will likely have minimal impact or input.
- consp 1y agoYou replace china with a directorate with a (possibly different) propaganda goal. Don't know if that will be any better, safer or less evil.
- FridayoLeary 1y agoExactly my point. Hypothetically, even if the level of propoganda stays the same, at least it will be promoting western interests that may be harmful to us or may not. With Chinese propoganda you can be fairly certain their interests are in strengthening their own position and weakening ours. Anyway the western propoganda machine to the extent it exists is far more fragmented and weaker then the Chinese. In short i trust the West more then china and even if the gulf might be shrinking, it will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
- coldpie 1y agoChina has not made my wife's healthcare illegal, my friends' healthcare illegal, spent my tax dollars on genocide, profited from anti-vaccine propaganda, or sponsored weekly mass shootings in my country. The people running this deal and running American social media platforms have done all of those things. I have way more trust in a platform run by China than one run by Zuckerberg or Musk or Ellison.
- jfengel 1y agoI'm not sure I trust the American propaganda machine more than the Chinese one, not any more. Social media has become increasingly hostile, and there are hints that it's becoming violent. Some of these are foreign adversaries, but many of them are home-grown. They might exacerbate it but we seem to be doing it to ourselves just fine. Not that the Chinese would be better. But I'm not sure if they'd actually make it worse.
- basejumping 1y agoSo why do they want Americans to use TikTok? It's not like they can't live without it, and anyway, they still have Youtube and Instagram short videos, etc. It's also not to show other countries that US is better and not banning foreign apps (like China does for example), since showing a good example won't change what other countries do. Is it because they know it's a more addictive service that they then control and can influence people's minds? Is it for their friends to make money off this split?
- andy_ppp 1y agoSo given their history I suspect much like Twitter, TikTok US will push right wing propaganda and become a platform for MAGA. I’m still interested if TikTok users in the EU will be able consume US content and vice versa.
- coldpie 1y ago> letting china potentially use tiktok to spread anti western propoganda Lol if you bought into this. All the anti-Tiktok stuff & forced sale is just a gift to American businesses that were struggling to compete.
- quickthrowman 1y agoLarry the Lawnmower, to be specific.
- eckelhesten 1y ago"Anti western propaganda" means "dont show whats happening in Palestine and you'll be fine." Israel has controlled the narrative on Meta and Google. TikTok is the only platform they couldn't control until now.
- ashoeafoot 1y ago[dead]
- thevillagechief 1y agoHow and who is making the decisions about ownership? I'd think they'd have gone for open bidding, or even an IPO. I don't even see why negotiations with the Chinese was needed. There's a law, affirmed by the Supreme Court. The private markets could have handled this just fine. The Biden admin abrogated responsibility here by punting this.
- loopdoend 1y agoIt is a tool to control people they don't want to shut it down.
- razster 1y agoI only use TT for my 3D modeling, Blender3D tricks and motion graphics. I have all political options disabled and have blocked all news. So far not a single political ideology has popped up on my fyp. Ads are also 0. Enjoying it so far. Fine tuned for my needs.
- bamboozled 1y agoand you are what, 0.5% of people that use it and do that?
- tdeck 1y agoI only use YouTube in a mobile browser with uBlock Origin turned on, so I never see any ads. Highly recommended by the way. Clearly YouTube is a terrible business model and has zero revenue potential.
- burkaman 1y agoDonald Trump and his friends are making the decisions. They have ignored the law you mentioned because they don't like it.
- addicted 1y agoFor context, SNAP is valued at $14Bn. This is a straight up giveaway to friends. Even dictators in other countries don't make it so obvious because they're worried their populations would revolt, which says a lot about the American voter today.
- giarc 1y agoIt's all a grift. The cynic in me says that if you looked close enough, you'd find some large deposits into Trump coin or World Liberty Finacial shortly before this announcement.
- mandeepj 1y ago> This is a straight up giveaway to friends. None of Tiktok's executives were present, and China has not confirmed the sale. So, I don't think clown's EO means anything. He's living in his own la la land :-)
- throwawaymaths 1y agowait why does china have to confirm the sale? i thought tiktok was singaporean!
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoThe CEO of TikTok is from Singapore. Bytedance is a Chinese company.
- c0balt 1y agoShou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok since 2021, is Singaporean. TikTok, the company, is owned by ByteDance.
- mandeepj 1y ago> i thought tiktok was singaporean! Tiktok's CEO is a singaporean! Maybe you are mixing it with that. Tiktoks' parent company ByteDance is headquartered in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance
- blitzar 1y agoCongratulations to the US on taking soverign control over their TikTok feed.
- mikeodds 1y agoNow let’s do LPs of famous American VCs
- kspacewalk2 1y agoCongratulations to TikTok for avoiding being kicked out of the US market.
- blitzar 1y agoTechnically they are kicked out of the US market. Their app, content and users siezed and handed to another party.
- Calavar 1y agoThe Gulf States are seeing absolutely excellent ROI for the 1b they pooled together for a 747.
- ceejayoz 1y agoWait until the intel from the bugs comes in!
- shihab 1y agoThat was government of qatar, this is Abu Dhabi (UAE). They had a diplomatic crisis, with full-scale blockade not so long ago.
- meibo 1y agoIt's fine, I don't think he can tell the difference.
- bgwalter 1y agoUAE was engaged in crypto dealings instead: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/us/politics/trump-uae-chips-witkoff-world-liberty-takeaways.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/us/politics/trump-uae-chi... "Earlier this year, World Liberty, the crypto firm run by the Trumps and Witkoffs, announced an agreement with an investment firm backed by the ruling family of the U.A.E. The Emirati firm would conduct a $2 billion transaction using World Liberty’s digital coins, a deal that would provide a windfall to the Trump and Witkoff families."
- analog8374 1y agoTiktok is good for what, spying and propagandizing? I can see how all the rulers would want to buy in on that. Probably got some serious large scale magic analysis stuff going on. It's heartwarming to see the ruling classes coming together for their mutual benefit like this.
- draw_down 1y ago[dead]
- karaterobot 1y agoThe ideal scenario isn't the government forcing a sale of TikTok for political reasons. The ideal is that people stop using TikTok because they realize it's not good for them, but I guess I don't see that happening. Instead we'll just continue scrolling while wondering why we're so unhappy and angry all the time.
- sentinelsignal 1y agoUnfortunately you're right. Including the last part.
- nostrademons 1y agoI had heard that the existing TikTok app will shut down in the U.S, with the investment consortium launching a new TikTok US app and re-training the algorithm on U.S. users only. If this is true, it might have the same effect: speedbumps where users have to download a new app and lose all their personalization often lead to massive drops in userbase, as they figure that if they have to start from scratch anyway, they might as well start from scratch doing something else.
- dboreham 1y agoThey (Andressen et al) won't do it that way.
- Rebuff5007 1y agoIMO the ideal is incredibly strong data privacy laws such that it does not matter if consumer products are owned by a rich guy in Mountain View or Abu Dhabi.
- AdamN 1y agoPrivacy (a big issue) is the least of our problems with media ownership by hyper-elite royalty.
- xnx 1y ago> The ideal is that people stop using ______ Fill in the blank with whatever you find personally disagreeable: TikTok, alcohol, sports gambling, hallucinogens, video games, cigars, sugary foods, etc.
- baxtr 1y ago> MGX, chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, will take 15% stake, with social media firm valued at $14bn So they value the most attention owing social media at a mere $14b? As reference: Meta has a total market cap of around $1.8 T.
- jasonlotito 1y agoFor what it's worth, this is just TikTok US, not TikTok as a whole. Make of that what you will.
- pzo 1y agostill looks small if simplifying and counting just by global population would be 340/8100*1800 = ~$75B. Besides US market is more profitable.
- jasonlotito 1y agoMeta is more than just Facebook though. > still looks small if simplifying and counting just by global population Yes, I agree, if you ignore everything except one single number, I can see how it can be confusing.
- prmoustache 1y agoAre the US Tiktok infra, network and user feeds separated from the rest of the world?
- jasonlotito 1y agoYes. This is fairly common knowledge.
- prmoustache 1y agoSo people in Europe and Latin America for example cannot see USA accounts/contents and vice-versa? What about Canadians?
- fennecbutt 1y agoLmao "protecting American data" by handing it over the the UAE.
- rswail 1y agoLarry Ellison will own the data. It already is hosted on Oracle Cloud. The data won't leave the US, the UAE are paying a protection tax.
- sporkxrocket 1y agoLarry Ellison is far more concerning: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/5038379 https://www.ynetnews.com/article/5038379 Between them and a16z, this is Israel taking control of a channel they view as threatening as it gives Palestinians a voice.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- endsandmeans 1y agoWhen the state picks the winners everyone loses. Run it into the ground!
- tolerance 1y agoThis is turning into a crude case study for multipolar geopolitics.
- bgwalter 1y agoIf Larry Ellison overtly censors TikTok, teenagers will leave. Do I understand that the strategy here is soft power so that teenagers get approved content via the algorithm in the hope that they don't notice? That is a pretty big gamble. So they are dumping part of that risk on the gulf monarchies like with Twitter. I bet China is already working on a TikTok replacement.
- ct0 1y agoNo they wont, teens everywhere still use IG, and YT.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- paxys 1y agoThe biggest benefactor here is Meta. There's no way TikTok will remain a dominant social platform in the US amidst all the political meddling and so many high profile investors with competing interests. This is likely also why Meta announced that they are overhauling Instagram to make Reels and recommendations the default experience - https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/instagram-overhaul-app-number-users-102358878.html https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/instagram-overhaul-app-num.... Just as with Threads, they saw an opening and are doubling down hard.
- bamboozled 1y agoWe could be spending all this effort on curing diseases...how stupid we can be.
- belter 1y agoLarry Ellison is the richest person on Earth, and that tells you everything you need to know about the world, and Peter Thiel AntiChrist concerns...
- gretch 1y agoYou won't believe this next part. We actually did make vaccines for several diseases that were as close to 100% safe as real world possible, and people were voluntarily rejecting it.
- sli 1y ago
- dyauspitr 1y agoAt $14billion most of big tech would have picked this up without a second thought. This is anti capitalist, communist bullshit.
- Rakshith 1y ago[dead]