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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

#331

Post by thinkcontext »

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.

> With, apparently, a board member appointed by the Trump administration.

Trump has essentially selected all of the board members. Its not a coincidence that Larry Ellison and Andreessen are big Trump supporters. The amazing corruption continues.

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

#332

Post by cvoss »

roughly wrote: post #314
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…

> 5. Algorithm will be initially licensed, but has to be reengineered to comply with the law. The government board director is one thing, but what exactly does this mean?

The law simply requires that the content recommendation algorithm not be shared between the two apps. [0] Thus, it must be rebuilt by the new team, and not maintained or controlled by the old team.

The licensing approach is a temporary solution to keep the app working from day 1. One of ByteDance's complaints during the lawsuit earlier this year was that is was going to be technically infeasible for engineers to rebuild something as complex and essential as the content algorithm in the short window of time they had before the law went into effect.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...

"The term “qualified divestiture” means a divestiture or similar transaction that ... would result in the relevant foreign adversary controlled application no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary; and ... precludes the establishment or maintenance of any operational relationship between [the two apps/teams], including any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing."

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

#333

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #277
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only boomers in the US right wing have a net favorable view of Israel One, source? Because it's broader than that. Two, you're measuing sign but not magnitude. A majority of Americans now have a negative view of Israel. A vast majority of Americans are unwilling to prioritise this issue in elections. (To the degree there are folks willing to do so, they're in deep-blue cities. Their power is in Democrat primaries.…

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/08/how-ameri... Republicans aged 19-49 have are split 50-50 on Israel with a strong and clear trend in the negative direction. That only leaves 50+ Republicans, sure a stretch of 'boomer' to include 50-61 in that but that only means it'll take a bit longer for the 50-61 cohort to hit net negative. This isn't a problem for Israel now but I believe it's existential for th…

Thank you for the source.

> isn't a problem for Israel now but I believe it's existential for them in the future

"A slight majority of Americans (53%) now express[ing] a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Israel" is new, but given "the share of U.S. adults who voice very unfavorable views of Israel" is only "19% in 2025" (up from "10% in 2022"), it's not fair to call the threat existential. If that latter rises into the 30s, one could expect the American-Israeli alliance to start fracturing.

(Given the size of Israel's economy and potency of its military, it's also naïve to assume it couldn't replace America as a security partner. What it probably couldn't get from its new friends would be as favourable, deferential terms.)

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

#334

Post by yoyohello13 »

wnevets wrote: post #258

Between this and the US government taking ownership in Intel the "small government is good" and "socialism is bad" crowd have been very very quiet.

The Evangelical thought-police republicans seem to have beat the libertarian republicans into submission.

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

#335

Post by delichon »

thinkcontext wrote: post #331
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.

> With, apparently, a board member appointed by the Trump administration. Trump has essentially selected all of the board members. Its not a coincidence that Larry Ellison and Andreessen are big Trump supporters. The amazing corruption continues.

> The amazing corruption continues.

Also known as industrial policy. They are inseparable.

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

#336

Post by yoyohello13 »

seizethecheese wrote: post #180
spacechild1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just crazy. No single person should have this amount of power, in particular if they have the moral integrity of Larry Ellison...

Genuine question: what do you think the alternative is? Ultimately someone will have the power. I don’t know what’s particularly questionable about Larry Ellison. An entrepreneur controlling media seems better than the state or a foreign government.

It less about who and more about how many. Lots of different people, with different points of view, sharing control of the media is way better than one guy having the ability to push whatever narrative they feel like at the time.

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

#337

Post by hamburglar »

hvb2 wrote: post #224
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…

> All U.S. user data would sit on Oracle infrastructure in the US. Legally required to use the services of a specific company, that's a sweet deal right there.

TikTok has been on Oracle cloud for years. One of its biggest customers.

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

#338

Post by smegma2 »

LetsGetTechnicl wrote: post #173

Are there any other examples of something like this happening? A successful (foreign) app is forced to be sold to a US company just because of its country of origin? What happened to the free market? It's remarkable that privacy is even in the conversation when FAANG is just as bad Not to mention that this is all just a distraction from the very real destruction Trump 2.0 is doing to peoples' lives, safety, financial…

Yes, in 2020 Grindr was forced to sell for similar reasons.

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

#340

Post by cookiengineer »

adastra22 wrote: post #33
Justsignedup wrote: post #30

The most terrifying thing is there will be a trump-government representative in the governing body. We are truly looking at 1984 as a blueprint not a warning.

You can just not use TikTok.

The problem with that rhetoric is that at some point you need social media to prove legitimacy of your identity.

It already happens at border controls and TSA checks.

Guess when that "you can just not use TikTok" argument will expand to "you can just not use the internet" and effectively be punished monetarily or socially for not wanting to use it.

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