81–90 of 723 posts
social media app that has up to 80 million daily active users in the United States. Crazy that one person can ban something over 1/4 the US population uses every day. The implications of that are staggering. (for any politically trigger fingered voters who think this opinion is derived based on current administration, you would be incorrect. I do not think something like this should ever be decided by a single person…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
America has been acting neutral for last decades, especially last 15 years where China has asymmetrically taken advantage of American companies. China is getting a taste of their own medicine and I am fine with that.
This is essentially admitting that the free market lost and doesn't work anymore. Because the free market has clearly decided that it likes TikTok, even enough to share its data with the company. I don't think people realize how significant this might be.
How many people do you think have opted into this with informed consent vs clicking through multiple pages of deliberately obfuscated terms?
I'd like to see any YC users come by and claim the US has a "free market" at this point.
The hypocrisy in YC isn't this. It's that people argue the virtues of "free-markets" while simultaneously arguing the most valuable thing any business should build is a "moat". It the utter acknowledgment that avoiding/prevent competition is the way to be successful, while arguing that free markets enforce competition. Its blatantly obvious that network effects, exclusivity contracts and monopolies exist. And well an…
By and large, the US is a free market with your obvious government regulations. However, it’s not a perfectly competitive market because of the things you mentioned. Because a true “perfectly competitive market” is almost impossible to achieve, no nation’s economy is, but some are closer to it than others.
Perfect competition benefits the consumers most, while network effects, exclusivity contracts, and monopolies obviously benefit the companies more.
One of the biggest goals of US government economic regulations (at least ideally) is to steer the market as close to a perfectly competitive market as possible. Companies optimize in the other direction, and try to make their market less competitive despite those regulations.
This dynamic doesn’t mean it’s not a free market, it just means that we need regulations to counteract the forces of companies and keep it competitive.
This is why I find it misguided when people want a totally libertarian system with no regulations, because that will inevitably lead to a less competitive/efficient market.
US is doing with China what China did with them. American VCs and business men used to criticize and mock Chinese government for it. Since US is following the footsteps of China, I wonder whether Chinese will be doing what US VCs did?
US is doing with China what China did with them. American VCs and business men used to criticize and mock Chinese government for it. Since US is following the footsteps of China, I wonder whether Chinese will be doing what US VCs did?
So how will this work? Will there be 2 apps? Tiktok US and Tiktok for the rest of the world?
I wonder how long this deal has actually been in the works, and Trump, seemingly privy to this knowledge, saw a good opportunity to take credit by pre-empting the inevitable announcement of a sell off. Why else would he announce his plans of an executive order instead of just doing it?
Trump's grudge on Tiktok users apart, could this be a plot of hostile take over? With all the public threats ByteDance is receiving from president of USA, Msft or any other company which acquires, gets one of the biggest social networking site of the decade at give away price.
I don’t think it’s at a discount at all. They’re effectively selling it at the height of the market. Even if they cut valuation in half, it’d still be at a significant premium.
As I currently recide in a country famous for blocking access to websites, I follow these developments as closely as I can. Whatever happens, it's probably going to be a recipe on how to force all foreign providers to act the way the local government wants. These days the theme is forcing on the ant-gay stance, they managed to force Netflix a show that had a gay character in it. Besides that charade, they passed laws…
Ironically, this future might be what CCP wished. Their practice won't be regarded as "archaic" anymore and U.S ultimate grip in tech might start to wane, however small will be. A few days ago Pompeo warned that CCP might change "us" (outside PRC in this context). It seems, however, that U.S. might be the first to be changed.
edit: unfavourable opinions seem to get downvoted into oblivion. I am actually surprised by the jubilance in the tech community towards state intervention. Had no idea that people dreamed of becoming like China where the all knowing government protects them by telling them what apps can use and which website they can visit.