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U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

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Re: U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

#541

Post by nebula8804 »

glenstein wrote: post #493
imiric wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if the toxicity of the American culture wars can be contained this way. Huh? Are you not aware of US social media companies? Everything that's happening on TikTok is also happening on X, Facebook, Friendster, or whatever the kids are using these days. The only difference is that the TikTok algorithm promotes Chinese propaganda and ideology, and enriches the Chinese government and ByteDance. The US can't ha…

>This won't affect the American downward spiral a single iota. Broadly speaking, I think you're probably right that the dynamics on tiktok already exist elsewhere in social media. But I do think a practical upshot of it could be a version of Tiktok where you can criticize the Hong Kong takeover or Xinxianj labor camps or harassment of expatriate dissidents or Taiwan indepence openly and not have it soft-deplatformed.…

Oh great now Americans get to talk about things the US government could care less about while at the same time losing the ability to criticize Israel or the current administration. Does not sound like a great win. There were plenty of platforms to talk about those topics already. What didn't exist was a platform that expressly talked about things the US does not like. It could be argued that the rise in pro-palestine awareness post Oct 7 is in part to TikTok. Thats likely going away now so Americans on the whole are left worse off.

Re: U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

#542

Post by oblio »

athorax wrote: post #516
delfinom wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are slowly becoming Communist China. Won't be long until all companies will be required to have a party office.

This is such a funny take. In China corporations operate at the behest of the government. In the US the government operates at the behest of corporations.

That's changing, though. They working together, but the balance is tilting towards the US government and worse, towards individuals controlling it.

Re: U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

#543

Post by toofy »

glenstein wrote: post #489
yibg wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I mean I do want the world's most influential social media app to be within the jurisdiction of a non-authoritarian state, yes.

i want the worlds most influential social media app to be away from the jurisdiction of any powerful people/organization, whether that’s governments, religions, billionaires, etc…

i find it worrisome that some are implying it’s new controllers are somehow less of a threat.

Re: U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

#544

Post by harrisi »

Animats wrote: post #196

With, apparently, a board member appointed by the Trump administration. The U.S Steel deal included three board seats, but the Intel deal did not include any. This is starting to look like the way China does things, with the central government having a financial stake in important companies.

I'm really surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of the (effective) nationalization of US Steel, so thank you for bringing it up. It's not only that he gets to pick board members, he gets final say on basically any decisions the company makes.

Re: U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

#545

Post by nikkwong »

glenstein wrote: post #485
jfengel wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ju…

>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 distingui…

> but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.

I think political scholars will debate on what the net effect of this is actually going to be. As in, are we better off with the GOP or the CCP controlling the algorithm? Certainly, the CCP has anti west incentives that the GOP does not, like trying to confuse us as to how we should feel about protecting Taiwan.

But in the past, the CCP has been interested in sewing discontent in the US and the method by which they have done that is by propping up the GOP. And many ways by which both the CCP and GOP would presumably manipulate the algorithm would be similar—owning libs, promoting radical right wing views, etc. But having the GOP control TikTok is a different thing entirely, they are much more incentivized to propagate their own flavor of politics to skew the nations narrative to their liking, in a much more controlled way than I think the CCP would. See twitter for prior art here.

At least if TikTok is owned in the US there might be some oversight into what’s going on. As bankrupt as Mark is as a person it doesn’t seem like hes pushing his own political views into instagrams algorithm, unlike the case at twitter. I think we have yet to see how Ellison will treat the great power of controlling the TikTok algorithm but I’m cynical.

Re: U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

#546

Post by seattle_spring »

palmotea wrote: post #538
jfengel wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ju…

> 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.

Unchecked Zuckerberg is still preferable to anyone appointed by the current admin.

Re: U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

#547

Post by knome »

palmotea wrote: post #538
jfengel wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ju…

> 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.

>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.

Re: U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

#549

Post by seattle_spring »

glenstein wrote: post #489
yibg wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I mean I do want the world's most influential social media app to be within the jurisdiction of a non-authoritarian state, yes.

So then you agree that putting our current government even partially in charge of the new company would be a bad idea?
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