Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 802 posts

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

#641

Post by s_dev »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #523
yibg wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea agree. The US used to be good at making the world believe they're all about freedom and rights etc. Now they don't seem to even bother trying anymore.

I read a lot of anti-American comments like this one, mostly on American websites like Hacker News and Youtube. I'd say the anti-American comments outnumber the pro-American ones something like 10 to 1. The US may not be preaching about freedom and rights. But it seems to be practicing it, at least in the narrow sense that anti-American content isn't being censored or suppressed.

> But it seems to be practicing it

This deal cuts the US off from worldwide content. Just like China does.

The US TikTok will literally be a bubble that the US gov controls. So it's not even pretending to practice 'freedom' here.

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

#642

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

slg wrote: post #583
Pxtl wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#643

Post by brianmurphy »

pelorat wrote: post #593
andsoitis wrote: post #58

So now we will split American TikTok users from those of the rest of the world? Madness.

Madness for the USA, but a win for Europe if our kids are shielded from right wing American content. I wish Europe could do this with X. Force Elon to create a wall between US and EU users.

Why do you want to exist in an echo chamber? Suppressing ideas doesn't make them go away.

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

#644

Post by card_zero »

komali2 wrote: post #598
glenstein wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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, s…

When did the concept of "a free country" arise, and what did it mean? It seems to have been in use in the 1600s. Here it is in a tract written, apparently, around 1689 in England:

https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-tract-su...

The freedoms in that instance are freedom of religion, and democracy. (Democracy, the franchise, was limited to about 10% of men, under rules that varied locally from "you have to own a house" to "you have to own the entire region".)

But here the concept is again in ancient times:

https://archive.org/details/BiblicalCollectionPrintedBetween...

This is (a translation of) Josephus, writing in the first century about a speech by a Roman senator from the time when Claudius was put on the throne, with lines like "our natural freedom", "breath of liberty", and "the Liberty of former Times, that was dead and gone before ever I came into the World ..." I can't work out what that freedom was all about - Claudius came after Caligula, though, so you can make a good guess - but evidently this kind of concept is much older than the United States.

I also found the phrase "it's a free country" in Uncle Tom's Cabin, where the freedom in question is the freedom to control slaves.

So the concept is:

• Not modern,

• Not well defined,

• But not meaningless, either.

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

#645

Post by gorgoiler »

Is this all a canard to avoid having to implement actual consumer privacy laws?

The question is more about whether it is an intentional decision to go this route or a built-in, institutional decision. When faced with the foe of consumer data harvesting and tracking, right now it seems the US government has concluded the answer is that it is better to have an American company spy on people rather than a Chinese one.

The best answer would be to enact laws to stop the act of spying on people, but that’s anathema to US political culture right now!

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

#646

Post by tw1984 »

s_dev wrote: post #641
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a lot of anti-American comments like this one, mostly on American websites like Hacker News and Youtube. I'd say the anti-American comments outnumber the pro-American ones something like 10 to 1. The US may not be preaching about freedom and rights. But it seems to be practicing it, at least in the narrow sense that anti-American content isn't being censored or suppressed.

> But it seems to be practicing it This deal cuts the US off from worldwide content. Just like China does. The US TikTok will literally be a bubble that the US gov controls. So it's not even pretending to practice 'freedom' here.

> Just like China does.

this deal is a direct copy of the one China forced onto Microsoft MSN Messenger's China operation some 15 years ago. almost 100% the same.

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

#647

Post by OhioMan2943 »

amatecha wrote: post #586
OhioMan2943 wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying it's unlikely to take off because it's pretty taken over by a group fringe enough to push away the average person. I'm not being entirely fair honestly. It's the internet we're in though- the "middle ground" of yesterday that helped sites take off in the past is getting harder to find.

Oh, it already has taken off sufficiently. There are some 10-20 million users[0]. Like I just said in an adjacent comment I've been using it nearly-exclusively for almost 10 years now, myself. It's not built for "growth" or to "compete" with big corporate social media so it's all good. Whoever is interested can try it out for themselves. BTW I've been on the net since 1992 and can say with certainty, every new social…

Definitely pretty valid points- I'm surprised by how long it's been around I always considered it a covid thing. Society could definitely benefit from the right sort of fringe ideas and people at the moment.

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

#648

Post by gorgoiler »

mullingitover wrote: post #494
gpt5 wrote: post #205

Key details: 1. New, US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users. 2. 80% owned by a U.S. investor consortium led by Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz, 20% by Bytedance. 3. Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director. 4. All U.S. user data would sit on Oracle infrastructure in the US. 5. Algorithm will be initially licensed, but has to be reengineered to comp…

This seems like the microwaved corpse of the original 2020 deal. Bytedance keeps all the IP, sells Oracle the nearly worthless right to operate the US infra. They can't even call their franken-app Tiktok. The US user data already sits in the US but they'll expect everyone to forget about that so they can brag about this token win. They'll probably get what they really want, which is an admin console for the algorithm…

Is the US data accessible to non-US entities? The point right now, as I understood it, is to cut off PRC access to the data completely.

Before: we’re spying on you, but here’s a copy!

After: we’ve moved the spy machine to Ashburn VA, here are the keys.

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

#649

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #551
yibg wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside impact to the rest of the world, America being the "leader of the free world" has benefited it immensely. Majority of the global systems were built by Americans. Everything from military power projection to global reserve currency status to pop culture has not only given the US clout and power but also a lot of wealth. Sticking to solve their own problems is how the Chinese declined into being the "sick…

>America being the "leader of the free world" has benefited it immensely. It doesn't make a difference. See this graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/GDP_per_... GDP growth stayed on the same trend both before and after the US tried to "lead the free world" post-WW2. >military power projection That's a cost for us, not a benefit. I don't want my tax dollars to be "projecting power". I want them…

> military power projection

> That's a cost for us, not a benefit.

If id get a cent for every US-american not understanding their hegemonial privilege...

(Sorry, shouldnt be an insult. Its just so prevalent and to me, a sign of lacking self criticism on a worringly massive scale.)

Eg:

https://business.columbia.edu/research-brief/dollars-dominan...

TLDR: The US military backs the dollar as international trade currency, which puts all other nations in a depending position to lend USD. This allowed the US to cheaply amass a gigantic debt that in turn allowed ridiculous (military) budgets.

Please dont answer something like "see, we are in debt for you", since the US got material stuff in return for a fiat currency that can they can devalue on demand but had been accepted on the basis of trust and stability.

Remember when "the market got the yippies" and trump chickened out of broad tarifs? It was also because of long term allies sending a signal by liquidating US bonds:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-bond-y...

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/15/us-treasurys-selloff-what-ha...

A continuing drop of bond yields could mean a collapse of the US national budgets. Thats the benedit you enjoyed for decades. Something other nations cannot do.

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

#650

Post by outside1234 »

gorgoiler wrote: post #645

Is this all a canard to avoid having to implement actual consumer privacy laws? The question is more about whether it is an intentional decision to go this route or a built-in, institutional decision. When faced with the foe of consumer data harvesting and tracking, right now it seems the US government has concluded the answer is that it is better to have an American company spy on people rather than a Chinese one. T…

Beyond spying, the government wants to be able to actively manipulate the feed to amplify certain voices and suppress other ones is my guess.
Post reply on HN