U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China
wsj.com344 points by Mgtyalx a day ago
344 points by Mgtyalx a day ago
https://www.wsj.com/tech/details-emerge-on-u-s-china-tiktok-...
https://archive.ph/g7dTU
Is this a coup by conservative government to gain control of this social network to promote it's ideologies? first Twitter, now Tiktok, both controlled by conservative interests? It's a coup by pro-Israel interests like Larry Ellison and Andreessen Horowitz. This has been floating around since the end of the first Trump administration, where neither of these interests were accused of being “pro-Israel” but only entrance narrative after the current Palestine debacle: Therefore I’m only left to conclude this is an entirely unsubstantiated claim, as why wouldn’t it have already been apparent if they were working as shadow brokers of Israeli interests in all this, which the general timeline and verifiable information we know don’t line up with? Is this an AI comment? They have vast business interest and contracts with Israel. The people who have been very vocal about forcing US ownership of TikTok have also been very, very open about their Zionism on social media. A16z has been pushing for this hard since the start of the genocide. Zionists blame "TikTok" for their opposition. They even call the younger people who don't support Israel the "TikTok Generation". This along with the consolidation of other US media assets under Zionist control, is very much about Israel and attempting to gain a monopoly on the media. This law passed during the Biden administration, but its implementation has been delayed repeatedly by the Trump administration. > but it has been broken repeatedly by the Trump administration fixed that for you The bill itself outlines specifically how and why it can be delayed. That was violated in the very first "delay". Turns out not having any penalty for the executive failing to apply the law is a mistake. Who could have predicted this. There is a penalty just congress has to enforce it. The only penalty congress can enforce on the executive is cutting the budget of things the executive wants funded. Also this only matters if the Fed is independent. If it’s not, the President can direct it to purchase unlimited treasury bonds, effectively printing unlimited money to fund any program it wants. Paired with this administration’s assertion of impoundment powers and the pocket rescission, the Congress’s power of the purse is completely neutered in both directions. The executive can decline to spend whatever it doesn’t want to, and it can fund anything it does want. Recklessly funding the government off of the Fed’s balance sheet will of course cause all sorts of nasty economic effects, but that’s exactly why you need to print money! So your massive immigration enforcement apparatus (newly full of ideological minions thanks to the current hiring surge) can go and assert powers of process-free expedited removal throughout the entire country (per DOJ memo from week 1). So the economic consequences hardly matter: you simply deport whoever complains. It turns out that if you won't impeach an executive on any principle whatsoever, you may as well grab the boot and put it on your own neck. I mean I’m as anti-Trump as the next, but didn’t the bill say it could be delayed to finalize a sale to American owners? You could make the case that this sale means the Trump admin actually didn’t break the rules here. It said it could be delayed with some pretty specific parameters. Quoting the Congressional Research Service report on the bill: "The President can grant a one-time extension of up to 90 additional days when a path to a qualified divestiture has been identified, there is evidence of 'significant' progress toward executing the divestiture, and there are legally binding agreements in place to enable the divestiture." One could argue all day about whether or not there was an identified path or evidence of significant progress, but certainly there weren't legally binding agreements in place at any point, and the deadline has been extended far more than once. Trump is ignoring the law. The DoJ has asserted that Trump can ignore the law because it would interfere with his duty to "take care of the national security and foreign affairs of the United States." It is unclear what, if any law, could not be ignored under this doctrine. It's a page in the conservative playbook going back a long time, from consolidating newspapers to talk radio to TV stations and now a new type of media... Seems like it. It seemed kind of inevitable. Biden made a mistake going down this road - of course, Trump started the ball rolling during his first term, but Biden should've just left it alone because it wasn't hard to see that this was the likely outcome. Biden? You do realize Trump attempted to “ban” TikTok in his first term when the original Oracle “deal” happened, right? Pinning this in Biden takes some serious mental gymnastics. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/20/914032065/tiktok-ban-averted-... Yeah, I do realize that and in fact mention it in the comment above: of course, Trump started the ball rolling during his first term. Not "pinning" it on Biden, per se, but he is the one who signed the bill. It would have been much better to leave it alone. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-what... Do you suspect Biden had a little plaque on his desk saying "The buck stops somewhere else"? He signed the bill. If he didn't want to own it, he doesn't have to put his name on it. Yes. And to enrich their buddies and campaign donors like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. I thought Ben Horowitz supported Kamala during the 2024 presidential election. That's bonus. The real thing is to make tiktok a right-wing ideology machine.
I'd rather have the CPC than the GOP at the helm. I don’t want either of them, but credit where credit is due. China is doing well as a country and the standard of living has increased even if it’s under an authoritarian regime. I wonder how long that will last. Meanwhile, the USA is becoming Russia. Basically a bunch of misinformed morons living in the past and thinking we are on top of the world while we accelerate towards irrelevance on the global stage if not for a massive stockpile of nukes. Remember that you can't have a democracy and increase the standard of living of your people and don't have USA planning a coup. >> China is doing well as a country and the standard of living has increased even if it’s under an authoritarian regime. What do you mean "doing well"? https://asiatimes.com/2025/05/chinas-economy-on-cusp-of-a-de... May 2025: Tariffs are drying up international demand for Chinese goods, and in a bid to keep factories alive, Beijing is urging exporters to turn inward. However, that pivot is compounding the very problem it aims to solve. Deflation isn’t an abstract threat in China anymore—it’s visible across the economy. After barely holding above zero for much of 2023 and 2024, consumer prices have now dropped for two straight months. Producer prices have fallen for 29 consecutive months. March’s figures showed the sharpest drop in four months, and forecasts point to an even steeper decline in April. Look at the past 15 years in the US vs the past 15 years in China, it’s fairly obvious Yes, trade wars suck but overall if you’re a young Chinese citizen today you’re doing better than your parents or grandparents could’ve dreamed: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... Yes, I’m fully aware that’s starting so low because of horrible governments in the past and that the current government is far from great, but that’s still moving in the right direction at the time the United States is trying to speed run to a Russian-style oligarchy and most people under 50 think it’s getting worse. It's really odd how many people on hn are pro china. Why? They are not good guys. At all. In moral terms they are so far behind the West they are in a different team. (and don't throw in disingenous deflections like gaza and whatever, those are orders of magnitude less bad then China) The West is full of freedom and the pursuit of happiness and wealth. China isn't. Nobody here is pro Russia or Iran, or even particularly pro India. So why is Communist China different? What an insane thing to say! But also... how insane is it that I agree with you based on objective reality? Can you imagine seriously saying that 20-30 years ago? 1984's doublethink/doublespeak always seemed over the top, yet we are at a point particularly recently where the anti cancel culture sentiment has lead to... proposals to curb undesirable speech, cancelling people... which in turn is undesirable because it criticises a propagandist's undesirable speech with his own post death quotes in a lot of cases and bristles when accused of sane washing. Or that this won't matter in a few more news cycles as we lurch brokenly into the next phase of dystopia. I wonder how many historical parallels exist and what the outcomes were; IE https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_colors_(Japan) - which I think lead to a flourishing of clothing design for commoners.
Like will we see massive social change in two or three generations hence as a rejection of the current hysteria? Will history books record the silliest parts that now seem quaint with a little distance, IE War on Christmas? Mission accomplished? WMDs that didn't exist? Etc etc. > wonder how many historical parallels exist and what the outcomes were; IE https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_colors_(Japan) - which I think lead to a flourishing of clothing design for commoners So that’s where the name of that David sylvian / ryuichi sakamoto song came from. I always thought it was just a throw away from the subject matter. The GOP is still more incompetent than anything I've ever seen. Bullying, yes. Competency, no. So incompetent that they control all three branches of the most powerful government on earth. Much of that can be credited to their media ownership strategies. Underestimate them at your own peril... Really? They are following Putin’s playbook and getting away with it. Controlling media and sharing the spoils with the oligarchs. Together, they are robbing us blind. What about what they are doing makes them incompetent? Evil, yes. But incompetent? They are winning! You think this ends with the next election or when ol’ Agent Orange kicks the bucket? Things are going to be very different here for a very long time unless we collectively get our shit together in a big way and take it back. They put loyal, useful idiots on the public stage. The real leaders are not on TV, you dont even know their names. So nothing will change? It’s just pushing Chinas ideologies at the moment. Oh I think I hit a nerve with the CPC army on HN. I’m not sure what you are saying… Are you suggesting that US Conservative viewpoints are aligned with those of China’s government? Well we’re clearly in the “don’t interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake” territory. Now that Oracle owns TikTok, you'll be sued if you cross post your content to other social media after posting on TikTok. Per "Oracle's Social Media Content User Agreement", by posting in TikTok, you grant Oracle an exclusive unlimited license, including, but not limited to, exclusive redistribution and resale rights. You also grant Oracle all rights on your eternal soul as well as from your descendants, up to the 7th generation. " It's rather amazing. They found one of the few organizations I trust less than the Chinese government to run this. Ya, the only comparably worse choices would have been IBM or Salesforce. Also known as the toxic techs. > They found one of the few organizations Or, the Org found them! It helps to kiss the ring. Compared to Larry Ellison, Kim Jong-un strikes me as a supreme humanist, a beacon of goodness and generosity. Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.
— Bryan Cantrill Indeed. And since you are so nice to Kim he can get a job as remote IT worker. Oh my. Forgot that nowadays people need to be explicitly warned about sarcasm or irony as they tend to interpret everything literally I don't think the average braindead tiktok user who watches choreographies all day long knows / cares / can even spell Oracle. I know what you will tell me: "but these people vote"... Hum, yes. They clearly have a plan. Ellison gifted his son NBC or ABC or some large network recently, if I recall correctly. Why do they need to control the media? To push a pro-Israel agenda. That's why Larry Ellison put Israeli loyalist Bari Weiss in charge of CBS. Don't worry. His son is also odds on favorite to own half of the US broadcast, film, and streaming media via Paramount, CBS and are in talks to purchase Warner Brothers, HBO, Discovery, and all their other cable brands. Oh wait, maybe we should worry about that a little. The delightful world of democracy and free enterprise! You are free to choose among the things the options the cabal provides you. What are you complaining about? I wonder if the license fee will be based on the number of followers. I hope it’s based on real engagement. I don’t want to pay just because a bunch of bots are following me. /s Link? It's sarcasm 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 comply with the law. Not discussed - whether the US tiktok app is allowed to compete with TikTok outside of the US. My guess is NO. 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 just the one that used-to-be-Chinese? Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it? It's an interesting question, but the information we have so far doesn't seem to be enough to give a meaningful answer yet. E.g. is it something like "one person appointed to oversee the full terms of the transition are kept" or "one person appointed always to make sure TikTok aligns with the government". I'm not necessarily a fan of either... but to vastly different levels. Seems obvious to me that this is so the government can force the platform to silence users who are critical of the government. Because Trump wants a proxy so he can continue to influence the direction TikTok takes. He wants easier access to data so he can go after his political opponents, as well as get things censored he doesn't like. Of course, this would all be possible without someone on the board, but it can't hurt, and likely will help. If TikTok removes something, would the fact that there’s a government representative on the board give standing for a first amendment claim? Normally private companies aren’t required to furnish you with first amendment rights, but if one could argue that, if not for the board representative, they might not have prevented that speech, then perhaps you would have standing. 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 The "Be all you can be" slogan requires more than just a great firewall that China should pay for, it needs a constant vigil to protect it from German nihilists. > Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director. In other words, one's data will now be under the scrutiny of amoral radicals who have decided to target people for political speech. We are slowly becoming Communist China. Won't be long until all companies will be required to have a party office. maybe, but i think what I see here is trump is not interested to beat china, just see what he did with s korea and india. the only thing may indicate that trump is competing with china is how hard he's trying to please putin, but apparently he needs to work harder to get into the organ harvesting club. This has always been the case. Such as the White House asking for certain moderation on Twitter (revealed in the Twitter Files) and Meta, Patriot Act, and of course everything Snowden brought to light > 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. As part of Project Texas[1], they've already been using Oracle's infrastructure. > The central feature of Project Texas is our work with Oracle to isolate the TikTok services serving U.S. users within Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment as an additional safeguard. Although gateways to the storage infrastructure are strictly monitored and controlled, U.S. users of the TikTok platform can still communicate and interact with global users for a cohesive global experience. I suspect the legal requirement is for it to be in the US, the Oracle part is probably just because they're the ones investing. That’s very interesting, I wonder if the toxicity of the American culture wars can be contained this way. Also, I see creators, trying to create US based TikTok accounts because they believe that this way their content will be shown to Americans, which are better monetized. If that’s the case, I wonder if international creator will move to the American TikTok for the better payout. It the international creators stay with the international TikTok IMHO that will be a huge win for China, practically displacing American culture for the younger demographic in the rest of the world. >I wonder if the toxicity of the American culture wars can be contained this way. Look at recent events: American government officials want to maintain the same level of toxic culture wars that foreign governments want. They just want to control them, not contain them. Giving power to the radicals that want division wouldn't have that effect, and it's bizarre to even suggest that it would. >> I wonder if international creator will move to the American TikTok for the better payout. If I were China I would do this deal and then ensure that the payout is better outside the US. Try to sway US content creators to use VPN's and post outside the US and essentially limit the impact of the deal. > 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 have that, hence this deal. This won't affect the American downward spiral a single iota. That would require strong regulation of social media companies and adtech in general, and there would be a nationwide revolt if that were even proposed. This is far from being considered anyway, now that Big Tech is deeply entrenched in the government. > 1. New, US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users. IMO this significantly impacts the value I would get from TikTok, as much of the content I consume on the app is from outside the US I guess they are hoping the US market will be big enough so self sustain and even entice some foreigners to join the US only app? Will people just stay with the old app out due to inertia? Or will there be annoying "blocked in your country" type messages until you switch? (at which point you won't know what's been blocked in your country) Will there be an old app and new app available both to US residents? I don't see how that'd help them reach any of their stated goals, as I'd expect overwhelming majority of users to a) simply not care and stay, b) prefer the better international app with more content from all around the world Wait, so for everyone else this means American content will be off the main app and be contained? If this stems the tide of MAGA brain rot seeping north into Canada it's an absolute win. MAGA content is easily avoidable, because the algo already prioritizes what you engage with. For me in Canada, there's just a lot of funny/insightful US-based content I do watch. TikTok got significantly less interesting when the US blocked themselves earlier this year, if that happens permanently it'll probably hurt TikTok worldwide. > 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." Of all the tech companies, Oracle seems to be making the most and a killing due to Larry's cosy relations with Trump. Last week's announcement that they have a 500 B deal with Open AI, and now this. Elon really fucked up! Key details: 1. DOA app nobody wants 2. whocares 3. see 2 Good luck to the administration while trying to roll this out. >> US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users Very interesting! The separate "in content" bit in particular. Sounds like US TikTok will now be one giant echo chamber. Users outside the US will miss some US content but tbh, I find TikTok content is actually quite localised anyway. Big benefits for users outside the US are: 1. US doesn't get my data. 2. Hopefully less US political BS to swipe past. 3. I am much less concerned with the sway China has on Western Europe than the sway the US has and am therefore much happier using a China-backed version of the app sans US content/users/control/propaganda. The extreme brain rot causing people outside the US to care about 'MAGA' or that recently assassinated man will hopefully start to recede. That can only be a good thing. We have plenty of our own polarising issues without importing irrelevant ones. > one member designated by the US government. Why does the board of TikTok need a gov member? Is Meta going to get a gov chaperone too? And Oracle surely needs one as well. Is the gov putting out a call for board member civil servants? Like where does this person even come from? Same reason they put a guy at CBS as a "bias monitor": https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-fcc-cbs-ne... They want their guy to make sure things go their way / people say the "right" things. > a guy at CBS as a "bias monitor" Kenneth Weinstein. "Mr. Weinstein has had a long career in right-leaning and neoconservative public policy circles. He is a firm and vocal champion of Israel." (NyTimes) This is precisely why I don’t see the value of “right” and “left”, because it’s absolutely useless and even a distraction from understanding the true nature of these types of topics. It has absolutely nothing to do with “right” or “left” and everything to do with overarching interests. I've been wondering if enough people would be single issue voters on the Israel question that we could actually get some sort of candidate who attracts a ton of voters from both traditional parties. It's ironic because (IMO) people like Ben Shapiro and other pro-Israel people deliberately divide us to prevent us from uniting against them, but the genocide has actually united us[1]. Just the other day I saw a Twitter post from one Cenk Ugyur reaching across the aisle and saying "good job" to right wingers who objected to hate speech laws against people who celebrated Kirk's assassination. Admittedly, if 68% of Americans are opposed to Israel that doesn't necessarily mean all of them are single issue voters... but I think this is the first issue I've seen in my lifetime that gets this close to uniting Americans. [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-militar... Didn't expect to see the USA employing press censors in my lifetime but here we are. In Brazil during the dictatorship it was common for newspapers to print cooking recipes in place of censored articles, now I'm waiting to see if media in the USA has the balls to play the malicious compliance game... I guess I won't see it since money is basically God in America. One could argue they're not the same, but there has been TV broadcast censors for decades in the US. They were still least following somewhat defined laws though. > They were still least following somewhat defined laws though. I expect them to continue to do so, except that uncle Donald is the law now. > Is Meta going to get a gov chaperone too? I believe the technical name is "Political Commissar." Edit: Dana White, of MMA fame, now sits on Meta's board, though it is at Zuckerberg's request. > Is Meta going to get a gov chaperone too? They already got quite a few, post 2024 election. https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/dana-white-john-elkann-cha... https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/14/tech/robby-starbuck-meta-ai-a... Ha. I hadn’t seen the news in the latter link. Washed-up music video director to professional Twitter poster to advisor at Facebook. What a display of the American meritocracy. It's the political komissar, here to make sure nothing too critical of the current administration is allowed on the platform. This goes way beyond this current administration and has nothing to do with China, besides being the foil for the real reason of controlling what people can see and hear because the cabal that controls the USA does not like it. What do you mean - the CCP has always had someone sit on the board of major companies… oh wait which country was this again? TikTok dealt a serious blow to the Western consensus manufacturing apparatus. We saw that with Gaza especially. This deal is a step towards taking back control. Taking back control by _checks notes_ handing the Chinese propaganda tool to supporters of the current administration? Yes exactly. The US government likes propaganda. They just don't like it when other countries do it. That's how all ruling classes and governments throughout history have operated. It's now just mask-off in a country that people mistakenly thought didn't do that sort of thing. 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. You wrote this as a snarky rebuttal but you seem to be agreeing with OP? Confusing post. Yes, indeed. As the current administration, any US administration in the last 30-40 or years in fact, is for a fact very pro-Israel, so a move like this can only cement that stance. Maybe these crypto-zealots who scream about decentralization will actually try and build a thriving decentralized media instead of pumping and dumping shitcoins? The problem is that it's hard to make these things popular. There are several ActivityPub services that are pretty good and even have decent UXes, but they aren't super active. A major issue is it's confusing and the funds are limited. Yeah. I'm on Lemmy and Mastodon, but it ain't exactly jumping, and I'm sure part of it is definitely the confusion around how to get going and what it is. Lemmy at least is also pretty buggy, and I'm not able to find posts I saw a few hours ago, but ultimately I don't really know what the draw is or even could be for the average user. > try and build a thriving decentralized media This exists today, it has always existed, and you never needed technology to find the solution to it. Im a huge fan of the film Rope, because it is just done well. Its also got a ton of coding in it for "homosexual" themes that were very much banned at the time of filming. Understanding these paints the film in a whole new way... Shakespeare has a ton of contemporary satire coded into it. Unless you're aware of history or reading a version that illuminates the meta-context you would very much be unaware of its existence. It happens in modern film: Paul Verhoeven is a master of it. If you dont think there are coded communities on existing social platforms sharing information among in members I have news for you. More like walking straight into another form of "consensus manufacturing". You are not more informed than people a decade ago. It's not a matter of more or less it's a matter of what information you receive and in what order. Oracle owned Tiktok with right-wing and Trump friend Larry Ellison at the helm is a step in the right direction? That's crazy. I'm not an expert but this makes me think that it might time to turn off the screens and stop letting half-trillionaires decide what we look at. Without screens, how do you get the scale needed to organise and influence the direction of your country? Use Fediverse/ActivityPub, XMPP (maybe matrix), IRC. Use protocols, not "apps"/"platforms". Stop using corporate-owned centralized services. Well, unless you like being the subject of exploitation and manipulation of course. The nuance of protocols vs apps though is lost on the masses. Most people just want to stare at reels or be stared at in reels. This means that the only people you will encounter in protocols will be privacy freak type nerds and “normal” people you might actually feel better interacting with or watching are on popular apps. I fully expect a decent number of people in favor of this to, without a shred of irony, whine about wanting a free market whenever environmental regulations are in the news again. Useful additional context https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/top-trump-ally-may-soon... Reminds me of Yahoo buying Tumblr. Mismatched. Their best bet is to change little to nothing, but not sure the administration will let them. It does seem mismatched but it's also an opportunity for Oracle to become relevant in the space, if they handle it right. Though yeah, if they go the Yahoo-route it's going to be a huge waste. But it's really up to how the company handles the acquisition. Yahoo missed big time by just trying to change the culture of the userbase way too quickly. They didn't like that people were posting porn on Tumblr when that was one of the most important aspects of the platform for the users. They bled way too many users and took way too long of a time to do anything about it. I feel like Tumblr should have done their own patreon/OF type of push within the platform but they didn't have the vision. They literally had all the creators of that type of content at some point and they've now all moved to X/Twitter. I hope (i mean, idgaf but you know it's a figure of speech) that Oracle has a better perspective about the issue so they don't commit another billion(s) dollar(s) crime. >Current users of the app will be asked to shift to a new app So it's just going to fade into obscurity then huh So it's just going to fade into obscurity then huh We won't be so lucky. What's to stop ByteDance from waiting a while and making a new TikTok app under a different name? The network effect moats do not seem insurmountable. I'm sure once the US starts meddling with the algorithm people will start looking for alternatives. >> What's to stop ByteDance from waiting a while and making a new TikTok app under a different name? I'm sure this deal is more complex than "ByteDance is not allowed to run an app called TikTok within the US". Politicians are morons so I could be wrong but I would hope it's much more liberal than that. If anyone want's to save stuff off tiktok just incase this doesn't go through, just remove the "OK" from the URL, ending up at https://tikt.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44283876 basically seizing a foreign product/service. should do wonders for the 'free market' so US users will be cut off from the rest of the world? Wow. Thats crazy. TikTok in China is already cut off from the rest of the world. The US is just copying China's homework. This. I think people in general misunderstand the allure of power and the means to maintain it. Power centers in US are drooling at the opportunity to do what China has done in terms of controlling discourse and language. The interesting thing is that they all assume that this particular measure of control would never be turned against them. edit: Adjusted weapon to 'measure of control'. I accept people are a little too happy to overreact lately. In a democracy where the politicians change every 4-8 years this is receipt for disaster. The next administration will undo action taken by the previous one. In effect destroying any momentum or progress for achieving anything. For China and Russia this is not a problem because of the totalitarian state. These fascist Republicans are not intending on giving up power. A bit China mixed with the sham democracies of Russia, Hungary or Turkey - this is the model they're going for. What do you think the push behind the new gerrymandered districts is for? Why do you think they are assembling a national voter registration database that hasn't existed before? https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-doj-national-... Why are they creating fake emergencies to justify inserting federal police and the national guard in major cities with big Democratic voting populations? Get your surprised pikachu memes ready for the day martial law is called to permanently postpone the election. I thought conservatives were the conspiracy theorists. 1. Gerrymandering is and always has been a thing, blue and red. Nothing has changed. 2. Government puts government data from multiple government places into one government place. More news at 11. 3. Because you get stabbed/shot for just existing in them? Because of the riots earlier this year? Fascism = Something I don't like. Get a grip. We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk. > We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk. Except China doesn't actually serve its people. Things are way more cut-throat there, with much less safety net. The Chinese government sees workers as grist for the mill, not something to be cared for. > The Chinese government sees workers as grist for the mill, not something to be cared for. I think this is universal, but perhaps China indeed may be worse. There is a significant difference in a population of 70 million educated workers who need to be maintained for high performance and 400 million low skill workers who are highly replaceable. I am trying to make no judgement here, just explaining then 'motivational environment' This math of course is in flux to a degree we haven't seen in maybe 1000+ years though right now. Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US. I think you can it's just shifted by several decades because China took a long dark detour through the Cultural Revolution. QoL exploded in the US in the Post War period, partially imo because we were the only industrialized economy that didn't have significant homeland attacks during WW2 so the US got a straight shot to the top of the heap. China got a similar QoL lift through a similar path, mass manufacturing (this time business taken from the US by being far cheaper) and growth of in country expertise. Now even China is feeling a similar cost squeeze drawing some business to smaller neighbors. They're also just so much larger they can sustain a larger gradient between coasts that look closer to '1st' world costs and poorer interiors where cheaper manufacturing can be done. Sure, but what's relevant is what sort of political and cultural pressures we're all experiencing now. Maybe China is just a few years behind on the same crunch trajectory we're on, maybe not, but that doesn't matter much to what's going on today. > Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US. The Chinese rural population still isn't eligible for local equivalent of social security in their old age (that's only for city folks), and IIRC there was a huge unwillingness to provide financial assistance to individuals during COVID. Sure, and also quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. A government-provided safety net is not an absolute good; you need to ask what holes are being filled. Just because you have fewer full-body casts than someone who just got in a bad wreck, does not mean you are worse off. This is just the first step (and a big one given TikTok's reach) to a US great firewall. More like the other way around. US users are today 21 of the 49 TikTok accounts with the most followers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...> (not including TikTok itself). When the Trump administration came close to forcing a divestment/shutdown on TikTok in 2020,[1] Americans were 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue. [1] And boy, do Democrats who shouted Orange Man Bad back then now wish they had supported the move Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of global users ended up using the US app instead of TikTok. You won’t get the option to do it through the app stores, so pretty much no one’s going to do it. Why would anyone want to use OracleTok? TikTok is banned in India. OracleTok might not be.. So that's a lot of potential users. Nope. I get a lot localised content. The local food reviewers etc. won't miss out on US views. The people creating content in local languages won't notice a difference either. 15 years ago I think things would have went differently but now I think people will want the non-US version. And I wouldn't be surprised if US users grab themselves a VPN and a pirated APK and use it too. One thing I’m looking for in all of this is how trump will get a piece of this deal. Larry Ellison and A16Z will invest in Truth Social, buy Trump Coin, help his family, (or something) just asynchronously enough that it can’t be directly connected to the TikTok deal. Doubt they feel the need to wait. Nobody is going to do anything about it, just like nobody has yet done anything effective about the other blatant corruption. Look at the Saudi “investment” in Trump’s crypto. 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 not a fan of the administration by any means but a lot of democracies do this. Public/Private partnerships are commonplace in Europe. Is it common for this sort of company, though? I can see public-private partnerships making sense for infrastructure, for example, but a social media company? That just sounds like a way for a country to censor and push propaganda. Yeah, I don't mind the public profiting if public money and or concessions were made to set up the business. And especially for bailouts! > 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. Lol is that why the Oracle stock jumped. Probably someone timed it with the other announcement to make it look innocent. 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. They have been on a leash since the first term. Look what happened to Paul Ryan, the deficit, money supply, and federal reserve balance sheet. The term has been so abused that it’s no surprise the current administration was going to push in that direction themselves. All it takes is a minor rebranding and half the country or more would immediately sign up for it. For all intents and purposes, socialism just means “the people we don’t like”. As long as people feel like they’ll get theirs, I seriously doubt they care what economic system they’re living under. The Evangelical thought-police republicans seem to have beat the libertarian republicans into submission. I am ashamed to be an American. We are going to have so much healing to do. I'm 61. I've told my kids I could not have ever imagined we got to the state we are in, with the president trying (and largely succeeding) in advancing the "unitary executive" abetted by the Supreme Court. Hell, I wouldn't have believed it even 10 years ago. Oracle owning TikTok is one of the most unintentionally funny things to ever happen. Users better be running now before they get hit with those new licensing fees. Oracle: "Your phone has 6-cores and our minimum plan is 64 cores. Additionally, we see you upgraded from an iPhone 16 to the 17. Licenses don't transfer, of course. You owe us 3 kidneys." I've always been fine with Tiktok dying, surely that will be expedited under their leadership > Oracle owning TikTok is one of the most unintentionally funny things to ever happen. I'm hopeful. With any luck they'll ruin TikTok and it will die, a satisfying result. First they will start launching TikTok Enterprise. An all-buzzwords compliant subscription based solution for enterprise and professional content creators. why do people hate TikTok as a product so much? if TikTok dies then one of the alternatives: instagram reels or youtube shorts would take its place. the brainrot will be the same. I guess people think tiktok's algorithm is particularly pervasive over Google's or Meta's? But I don't see why. Those "alternatives" didn't exist before TikTok, not the same way. Hating the inventor of a drug more than the copycats is reasonable IMO. For me it’s the potential china influence. Reels and Shorts is at least American and I already have established relations with both companies. Are we for sure the TikTok algorithm doesn’t bump towards or away from certain issues? The data on the cultural zeitgeist? The ability to promote political messaging? Brainrot the same. Intentions, maybe not. People keep saying this but shouldn't it be kinda trivially easy to check? Start new accounts, swipe through the content and establish what kind of algorithm it is. The few attempts I've seen on youtube seem to indicate it's heavily based on your geographical area. They don't really care that much which side the apple falls onto. I do acknowledge that there's a latent threat that could be activated. And I can see an argument being made on that front, I mean, China doesn't allow access to a lot of American social media for that reason. But I don't really buy the argument right now as I haven't seen a lot of evidence of Tiktok doing things that Meta/Google haven't done. It's delightfully naive to think that a new account is 'fresh' and can't be associated with previous usage. Like you say, they could target different messages for different geographical areas. Similar to how in the election last year Dearborn, MI (highly middle eastern) got different messaging from both Trump and Kamala wrt Isreal/Palistine compared to the rest of the country on traditional ads. They can target any age range or demographics, any interests. We had Uber hiding things from LEO almost a decade ago via geofencing and other tricks, I’m sure it’s a bit more sophisticated now. You keep bringing Meta/Google into this. I don’t care if they do the same things. I mean, I wouldn’t like it either, but we have solutions available to us. We can pass laws or go to court and handle it internally. A foreign nation is not bound by that. The "good" news is that they will only own the US operations, with the ROTW continuing to be operated by ByteDance. So if they diverge too far from the original product we can expect to see a discussion about life behind the Great Firewall of America. I'm curious how bad the misinformation type stuff will be. It's bad everywhere, but I found TikTok to be the absolute worst. Not even just fake news political stuff where I can guess the motivation (still bad), but just basic everyday tips and tricks, local users describing news events. I've found it to be so much worse on tiktok. Other platforms there seems to be "more" intent by creators to provide somewhat consistent / factual content. Tiktok often feels to me like content accuracy / quality isn't a concern for most creators. I don't know about tik-tok, but Instagram is totally unhinged. Boobs, butts, gambling, brain rot, watchbait/ragebait, all that stuff. YouTube shorts gets all the hate, but I find the content to consistently be the most sophisticated? PG rated? educational? > Boobs, butts, gambling, brain rot, watchbait/ragebait, all that stuf I don't understand how other people have this experience and I don't. I see targeted ads of course. And every once in a while it starts showing me content for things I don't follow, at which point I start mashing the button they provide to make it go away, and after a handful it pops up something asking if I want to remove all suggested content for a while. I always select yes. Do other people actually *want* suggested comment? that's bizarre. Most people aren't actively curating their feed like this. They see an attractive person, eyes wander for a few seconds longer than the usual post before scrolling away, and that is enough. Short form video is basically worthless outside of comedy and cute animal videos. The format does not allow enough information to determine whether the information provided is accurate or not, for videos that have facts in them. Every time I watch a short form video I feel an overwhelming urge not to trust what I saw and verify it elsewhere, now I just don’t want short form videos at all. The modern propaganda machine does not run on meaningful facts, nor does it give a shit about not being able to convince you. It cares about convincing people in general. Oracle is then going to mandate license fees from every user, together with 22% support fees with 8% increase every year. They'll then rewrite TikTok in Java, and migrate to Oracle Database. The Android .APK files are already Java. IIRC, but I read the TikTok app is mostly WebViews, which was a design choice to help keep it functioning in the face of an App Store ban. IIRC TikTok is built using their own framework, https://lynxjs.org/ I totally forgot about this... I might have to look at it again. Thank you. They're going to send thugs into businesses demanding to see if any of their employees are secretly using TikTok on company time, then demand the business buy a million dollar corporate license. I've built a 12k follower audience for TikTok's on product management and project management. Time to migrate to YouTube. The USA forcibly nationalized TikTok so they can install their own surveillance and censorship apparatus along with skimming from TikTok's profits. All while decrying China for... the same thing. Republicans, not USA Isn't this as bipartisan as it gets? Trump wanted China to divest from Tiktok. Congress passed the bill. Biden signed it. The Supreme Court agreed that, yes, this is legal. Sure, people didn't vote for Larry Ellison to take control. But something like this is what we wanted, right? >The USA forcibly nationalized TikTok Unlike most nationalizations though in this case the company will be compensated: the new US entity will pay ByteDance licensing fees. Isn't that how it works in China? At least since the 80s. The CCP forces companies to insert their state-backed fund and officials into the cap table. Either through golden shares, forced mergers with state-owned enterprises, or forced equity sales. I think it's bad news if the US government owns Tiktok data rather than the Chinese government. Chinese government won't prosecute me. US government might. [0]https://time.com/7316628/charlie-kirk-death-celebrations-soc... When you reach the point of choosing the lesser evil, you might just as well uninstall TikTok. I've come across at least one businessman who refuses to use anything but a Chinese phone he bought in china, with chinese sim card and chinese apps, for that exact reason. That's strange. It wasn't because China mandates government spyware on phones? >Chinese government won't prosecute me. US government might. It's arguments like this that reminds of the critique of libertarians as akin to house cats that seek to undermine the very systems that allow them to exist in the first place that wouldn't survive outside for minute. Or maybe it's just agitprop right here. Questions regarding the US government-appointed director (CCP style?)... IIUC, Oracle has strong connections to the CIA, and Andreessen the person lately seems right-wing activist. 1. Under the current administration, maybe it doesn't much matter that there's a government monitor? 2. But if a more left-wing administration comes back into power, then a government appointee there could help moderate the other influences? This would just make them go in a situationship. Both are not compatible with each other in any way, but they are in a great deal, one they can't say no to. This is where either one fails or sometimes both. 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 outlooks, rights, etc and flushing our country and planet down to the toilet for his benefit *edited for clarity and fixed typos Yes, in 2020 Grindr was forced to sell for similar reasons. Today I learned! I remember it being sold to a Chinese company a few years ago, didn’t know it went back to US ownership. Ironically just deleted it because even with an Adblocker it’s still unusable with all the bots So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN. And now Ellison is going to take over TikTok. Paramount(being run by Larry Ellison's son) is looking to install the pro-israel-propagandist who has variously masqueraded as a liberal, a conservative and anti-woke free-speech champion, Bari Weiss[1] as CBS's editor-in-chief or co-president[2]. It also bears mentioning that Ellison is a life-long zionist, friend of the IDF and close personal friend of Netanyahu to whom he even offered a post at Oracle.[3] This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again. [1] - https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals... [2] - https://archive.is/20250916040811/https://www.nytimes.com/20... [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Ellison&old... This is just crazy. No single person should have this amount of power, in particular if they have the moral integrity of Larry Ellison... It is two people here. David Ellison who took over Paramount is the son of Larry Ellison of Oracle. 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. Is Larry Ellison owning TikTok objectively better for US citizens than the current Chinese owners? Thank you for providing the media take over angle. I wish the people down voting you would explain why. He’s got the wrong guy on the paramount deal. It’s David Ellison though they’re related: https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/paramount-warner-bros-disco... David Ellison is Larry Ellison's son, and Larry Ellison spent $6 billion on the Paramount deal. It's not really a stretch to imagine that the father might have some influence on the resulting operation. (According to a cursory web search, on paper Larry Ellison now has a 35.5% voting interest and David Ellison has a 64.5% voting interest.) I agree it’s not that big of a stretch, but it elevates the discussion when you communicate what part of your argument is objectively correct vs a stretch. My knee-jerk reaction was to upvote the comment, but that’s how Ecco chambers get increasingly divorced from reality. how do you know if anyone is downvoting a comment? The text gets lighter in color and harder to read. People may come later and vote for it, darkening the text again. [flagged] [flagged] [flagged] I don't believe for a second that you're being downvoted by someone with multiple accounts. You're being downvoted because you tried to frame a lukewarm observation (that brought receipts!) as some insane conspiratorial hot take in a really transparent manner, while simultaneously misrepresenting it (zionists vs jews) and ridiculing it (flat earth comparison). [flagged] Enough with the tone policing. The original comment is accurate: Paramount seeks to install Zionist Bari Weiss. This is uncontroversially true. We're no longer accepting this tripe as sane discourse. Anyone of sound mind has seen, over the past 3 years, that Israel's securocrats and Zionists in America and Europe shut down any views that's remotely critical of Israel by influencing the media. It's also as clear as daylight that TikTok's problems started after they gave the world a window into Israel's atrocities in occupied Palestine. Ellison is a self-confessed Zionist. Whether it's Bari Weiss abetting genocide against Palestinians, Silicon Valley purging anyone who questions it, or actively building the weapons that enable it, you can't glue people's eyes shut or force them not to believe their lying eyes with cries of antisemitism, conspiracy, etc. mate. You cannot accept whatever you want personally, I think the whole “the Jews control the media” narrative is a bit, I don’t know, antisemetic? Any time I find myself thinking “the x, y” I find that its probably racist. “the muslims make child rape gangs” “the welsh shag sheep” “the blacks are fatherless” “the whites are culture-less” Grow up. As a jew (it's a shame I need to admit this in order to get through your dishonest screening), he's talking about zionists, not jews. To be completly frank, its better to focus on the media consolidation part. That's the real problem. Actually it's the opposite. Pre-internet, there were a handful of news sources in any given city (mostly newspapers and TV), so they couldn't afford to alienate half of their potential viewers/readers by leaning hard left or right. Today, there are many, many sources of 'news' online. So many that the net effect is that most of those sources lean one way or the other, and by and large people choose to listen mostly or only to those sources they agree with. No wonder political opinions are so highly divided today. Almost no one ever hears anything from the other side. For a large share of the population social media is the only media they consume, so this is part of your real problem "hostile take-over of the American mind" You mean, to support Israel? Is that what this is about? > to support Israel? Is that what this is about? It’s for money and power. Because of the partisan nature of the power grab, a certain grab bag of evangelical, fossil fuel and anti-gay tenets are going to get reïnforced. But treating those as the cause dangerously misses that this is being started at home. I'd like to hear from the person I'm responding to, as it sounds an awful lot like a dog whistle. > anti-gay Larry Ellison’s daughter is gay. Why do you think her brother and father are going to infuse Paramount with anti-gay bigotry? It's important to remember that the ultra-powerful and wealthy live whatever life they want to live regardless of what their media companies promote. Someone can own a media company, have it push very specific political ideologies with the goal of turning people against each other and gaining power for themselves. By pushing antagonistic media, they can prop up fringe political figures who'd be more willing to help them with their political goals. (E.g. tax policies that help the wealthy person's companies.) They can still live whatever life they want, even going against the ideologies the media companies espouse, because they're rich enough that the fallout doesn't impact them. They're living a very different kind of life than us. BTW, I'm not explicitly arguing that Larry Ellison is doing this -- I don't have the context or background on that. I am saying that his media companies will 1. do things to help Larry's interests (which are probably political), and 2. that doesn't have to be aligned with however he lives his personal life, since he's effectively immune. > Larry Ellison’s daughter is gay. Why do you think her brother and father are going to infuse Paramount with anti-gay bigotry? Sorry, I'm speaking generally. The people in power broadly align with these policies. That means that when they gain control over a pillar of industry, they're broadly going to do influence it to some combination of those ends. The reason they gained power isn't to do those things. Ellison isn't taking control of TikTok to influence the Israel narrative. But when he takes control of it, as a result of the contours of powers that are MAGA, he will probably be forced to put forward an anti-Palestinian editorial bias. There is a lot of tail wagging the dog conspiracy in this thread. I'm pushing back on that. Current Oracle CEO Safra Catz lives in Palm Beach and is a frequent visitor to Mar-a-lago. She is actually a big Israel supporter, visiting and donating money often. > So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN. That's not Larry Ellison, it's his nepo baby David Ellison. Trying to be neutral. Did we consider China's relationship with Palestine? Were we ok with American minds being swayed by a foreign country? If we want neutral, how about a fair arena for opinions and ideas.. at the moment "The Right" yells and screams "Anti-Semite! Terrorist!" if someone protests against the starvation and slaughter of children... So having them control the medium doesn't feel right for me. Ok someone's going to come and say that "The Left" controlled the medium and disallowed "non-mainstream" messaging about Covid... I admit my bias and consider such messaging lunacy too.. What's the problem with being pro-israel? Everyone needs to be pro-whatever-you-prefer? I'm pro-israel too. > What's the problem with being pro-israel? There are tiny pockets of this country that assume this is the singular issue that animates everybody, every day, and that it is impossible to believe in both Israel's right to exist and defend itself and the Palestinians' right to not be bombed because the Israeli PM doesn't want to go to jail. What's the problem with being antisemitic? Everyone needs to be anti-whatever-you-prefer? The problem is the word 'anti'. Being pro something doesn't mean you're anti something else. I can be pro-israel and still have sympathy for the Palestinians and what they are enduring and hoping for peace. The problem is that the pro stands from problem. Whenever we take a stance, We identify our ego with that stance. We shall die but die a pro X or pro Y As such many debates happen in bad faith as well. Of course everyone has their agenda but one has to understand that agenda is just a framework for understanding the world. And we need to understand the world because it has no inherent meaning. So like, if we really have to deduce meaning, if we really have to be pro something that we can die on a hill towards, I'd rather have it be a humanitarian thing. I am not saying that palestine is good either but rather that in genocide/wars, the people fighting the war/military/families displaced suffer, not the old man causing the war. I feel like I am a humanist. Wishing to understand the world, yet I feel like some people in this world have hurt me so much that sometimes I just wish the world to burn. I am sure that people are gonna comment on something like "oh do you support a genocide etc." But I am trying to make the point that the world should really be just anti suffering,accepting. Yes I am naive but surely with all of this technological improvements, we can improve the structure of society to not be fucking brewing with hate and bullying and resentment. We can do so much better as a society without even trying much. Just small acts of kindness and basically creating a environment that rewards it and punishes bullying/hate speech etc. might be really nice if I am being honest. Not sure why we can't be pro this instead of defining ourselves with the confict of two other foreign nations I think it stems from being a selfish species. All our life we pick sides - a sport team, university, town, etc. > This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again. Again? People should be talking about the hostile take-over currently in progress and how it is getting exponentially worse. But the billionaire mouthpieces gave everyone a shiny new inconsequential talking point and no one cares about anything that matters. > No one cares about anything that matters. Maybe that's what they wanted all along. Why fight a war against class, against oppression when we can sit on a chair and write a comment either defending or arguing against something as petty as religion. It would be maybe the 3rd point worth discussing definitely after concentration of power & how they can influence our opinion of the masses. But people made it the first. There is no such thing as a moral billionaire imo, I saw a video like this and I sorta agree. I wouldn't be comfortable with anyone owning this much amount of control. Religion seems so petty to me yet it seems that the world is coming back to it. Fighting us vs them. We have all forgotten what the people in 1970's esque dreamed of 2025 etc. (I am a genz but I have seen such videos of people thinking what) And the funny thing is, is that we ourselves have forgotten how to dream of what will happen in 2100 Do we really want to grow old in society where even after 70-80 years, one of our children or grandchildren sees yet again some comment like this and writes something like this that I am writing? I feel a little frustrated. > hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man Ellison read and responded to the political situation more skilfully than Elon. He used Stargate to cement himself as a power broker in AI. He used that influence to provide antitrust assurances that gave his son a leg up for Paramount. Meanwhile he used that proximity to media to get a foot in the door with TikTok. The root cause is the partisan politicisation of the economy. This is a project all the major Trump donors and high-level supporters contributed to. That Ellison is coming up as one of the new aristocrats is closer to a dice roll; that we have oligarchs, now, is very much by design. In authoritarian regimes the industrial capacity of an economy is appropriated by the state, where the fruits of the industry are enjoyed by party loyalists. In this case using the state to choose which business is viable, no
doubt being businesses
that play ball with the party. -its why sectarian conflicts and power delegation is so high stakes in many parts of the world. [flagged] Ignoring the genocide topic for the moment, it’s relevant from a speech perspective: that’s an alliance of hard-right groups who have spent the last year conflating criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and trying to shut down voices which disagree with them (e.g. cuts to research grants based on unrelated actions on campus). Consolidating a large chunk of the information space under a unified group opposed to free speech should concern all of us. Your post is fair, but it's not how I read the OP, which seems less concerned with consolidation of power than with people supportive of Israel having power. And while I appreciate that criticism of Israel is not anti-semitism, believing that Israel is a legitimate state that has the right to self-defense is all it takes to be labelled as a "Zionist", and at that point it's practically a euphemism for "Jew". I'm not familiar enough with Bari Weiss's views to tell if that's what's being done here, but the use of a pejorative without clarification, combined with the fixation on "Zionists" and the implication that their intent surely must be to issue pro-Israel propaganda in particular makes it sound a lot like old-school anti-semitism. The wider context here is that the TikTok ban had significant support on the grounds of, what politicians and Zionist lobbying groups called, "anti-Israel bias" and "support for Hamas". Not just the explicitly stated "China Bad" motivations. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-ban-israel-... (Note: Article from November 2023) The opposition to TikTok on grounds of it's Chinese ownership had been on a slow burn right up to October 2023, when it picked up steam in the wake of the early response to the Gaza War. US politicians were furious that the youth weren't buying the Bipartisan Approved Position(TM) on Israel. Considering that major world organisations, even holocaust remembrance ones, are now calling Israel's actions genocide, that fury has aged like the finest bottle of raw milk. Hence: > and the implication that their intent surely must be to issue pro-Israel propaganda That is indeed the implication made, for the reasons above, I don't think it is unwarranted. That’s fair, I can’t say I know their inner thoughts either. Personally I’m concerned about the political unity and lack of respect for other people’s freedom of speech. We’re healthier with a robust public debate. I sympathize with the sensitivity of the topic and what dog-whistling can look like. However, we're discussing media that people consume and the control that people have over that media. One of the most critical topics being controlled by media right now is the genocide in Gaza. And we're looking at a large section of media, including TikTok, being controlled by someone who not only denies that a genocide is happening, but is also complicit in it with their military contracts with Israel. I think this is all relevant to the topic at hand. I'm sympathetic to your argument, because you set explicit boundaries on the issue of concern, and you mention military contracts with concretely align Oracle with Israeli interests. It takes very selective reading between the lines to interpret the OP this charitably, when a direct interpretation reads more like "Jews who sympathize with Israel shouldn't own media platforms, because they will use them for propaganda." Which is maybe four words distanced from last-century anti-semitism. I will add that TikTok is already being measurably manipulated, which everyone seems to be glossing over, perhaps because the bias runs in the "right" direction. What the other side is doing exactly? They try to ban every Israeli, including composers, athletes, scientists etc. It's much worse in my opnion. [flagged] Only boomers in the US right wing have a net favorable view of Israel and it seems to me a lot of that is driven by contrarianism in response to the Left. The left hate it to therefore I must like it… that and the evangelicals. As the genocide drags on I think it’s putting many boomers off and more up to date polling may find that Israel is underwater there too. That would only leave the right wing leadership being net pro Israel which simply highlights the disconnect between politicians and the people that vote for them. I’m pretty sure buying media companies like this is an attempt to stop the bleeding. > 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. Not in general elections, and certainly not over the GOP.) 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 them in the future. 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.) It's a bit weird to say Israel could replace the US as a security partner without giving an example of who that would be. Russia? China? The EU? And what money are they to buy the materials with, their own? American? Who would continue to bribe their neighbors they're not at war with and restrain those they are at war with. What if Iran really does get nukes, what if a 3rd country gives them one. Currently the Americans are trying to figure out how much sovereignty they really have and are discovering that it's indeed effectively none. What do you think that does to a population, especially during a sustained economic recession, where the fed is dropping interest rates, while stocks are at all time highs. It seems like the only thing Americans can agree on is that 'this cannot last', I don't know what'll replace it but there is a reasonably good chance it won't be good for Israel. > weird to say Israel could replace the US as a security partner without giving an example of who that would be. Russia? China? China, Russia and India come to mind. (The latter two need Israeli weapons expertise and are transactional about their geopolitics. The last is in the growing throes of anti-Muslim ethnonationalism. The first and third import energy.) > what money are they to buy the materials with, their own? Yes. Amercan aid to Israel is less than 1% of its GDP [1][2]. We buy influence with that money, but it's not existential. > What if Iran really does get nukes, what if a 3rd country gives them one ...Israel already has nukes and superior delivery mechanisms to Iran. Also, if Iran gets nukes, I put Israel becoming a regional hegemon protecting the Gulf from a nuclear Iran on the board. > Americans are trying to figure out how much sovereignty they really have and are discovering that it's indeed effectively none This is dumb. America's Israel policy until about 2025 has been broadly popular with the electorate. (Israel could have become unpopular earlier, but nobody particularly likes folks occupying universities and blocking bridges.)
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Americans prefer that Tiktok data lives within the jurisdiction of the US government, why? If you don't think Palantir is putting together a centralized database to survey individual Americans for the US government, you are crazy. There will be real consequences where if they don't like what you're saying or doing, they will come after you some how.
I'd much rather have my data based in China. The State Department also said it would crack down on non-citizens who have made posts making light of the shooting.
“In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country. I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted on Thursday. “Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the @StateDept can protect the American people.” [0]
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well, tbf in the old days, it was literally called ‘political economy’ for a reason… maybe the name should make a comeback. > The root cause is the partisan politicisation of the economy.
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