Comment by elzbardico

Comment by elzbardico 3 months ago

350 replies | 2 pages

This is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content.

Until now, the closest thing we had like this were national our regional networks like Russia's vk, but Vk was never truly popular outside Russian speaking countries.

Now we, for the first time ever, will have the situation where a social network has global reach but without american content.

Will it keep being a english first space? Will it survive/thrive? How the content is going to evolve? What does this means in terms of global cultural influence? Will we see internationalized Chinese content dominating it? Will this backfire for the US?

jmyeet 3 months ago

First, I still don't think the ban will actually happen. The current administration will punt the issue to the next and Trump has already signaled he wants to save Tiktok, whatever that means. That might be by anointing a buyer that he personally is an investor in. Tiktok may choose to still shutter in the US rather than being forcibly sold.

But there's a biger issue than loss of American content should this come to pass: the loss os American ad revenue for the platform and creators. A lot of people create content aimed at Americans because an American audience is lucrative for ad revenue. If that goes away, what does that do to the financial viability of the platform?

  • JumpCrisscross 3 months ago

    > Trump has already signaled he wants to save Tiktok

    Trump can blame Biden and move on.

    > If that goes away, what does that do to the financial viability of the platform?

    Bytedance makes most of its money from Douyin.

    • throwawayq3423 3 months ago

      He has a major donor that owns part of TikTok. He'll save it for corrupt reasons, ignore the real concerns about it, then move on.

      • JumpCrisscross 3 months ago

        > He has a major donor that owns part of TikTok

        He has a major donor who owns part of Bytedance. They’re not losing their investment with this ban.

  • blackeyeblitzar 3 months ago

    A worrying angle is that Elon is essentially subservient to the CCP because of Tesla’s presence in China. Remember when Tesla signed a pledge to uphold socialism at the behest of the CCP a couple years back? It’s also why Elon - who claims to uphold free speech, capitalism, democratic values, etc - will NEVER say anything negative about China. If Trump is close to Elon, and Elon is easily influenced/controlled by the CCP, it really undermines the independence of US leadership. I am concerned this next administration will be soft on China in all the wrong ways, including not enforcing a ban that has been legally instituted and upheld unanimously by SCOTUS.

    • matwood 3 months ago

      To your point, why is it rumored that China is exploring selling TikTok to Musk and no one else? For as many topics Musk goes off on rants about that he ends up having very little knowledge on, he never says anything about China.

    • antifa 3 months ago

      If Musk plans to uphold Communism in China and Democracy in the US, does that not mean "peace in our time"? WW3 pushed back 4 years? The alternative I've been hearing is that warhawks are being stuffed into the federal government this season.

      • onemoresoop 3 months ago

        No, he upholds his own values which are basically his own interests.

  • insane_dreamer 3 months ago

    More like Trump can use it as a bargaining chip with China.

    • criddell 3 months ago

      Trump doesn't seem to understand that there's a very real possibility that Tik Tok tuned their algorithm to support Trump because he's their best chance at survival. He's being played and doesn't seem to care as long as he's popular on the platform.

fuzzfactor 3 months ago

If a US-based alternative appeared which not only substituted performatively, but also monetized creators and influencers enough to put everyone else to shame, people could not help but notice and migrate there in droves.

It would be pretty cool if there was a respectable capitalist with enough money, or if that won't do it then a bigger more-respectable political organization or something, and Tiktok would be nothing but a memory of how things used to be before they got better.

Think about it, a social force or financial pressure strong enough to reverse unfavorable trends, even after they have already gained momentum.

And all it takes is focusing that pressure in an unfamiliar direction that could probably best be described as "anti-enshittification".

I know, that's a tall ask, never mind . . .

  • bee_rider 3 months ago

    I’d worry that such a platform would be used to reverse social trends unfavorable to the owner, instead of social trends unfavorable to society in general.

    It also seems… sort of bad if an individual has the ability to be strong enough to reverse a social trend, right? So we basically would have to expect one of the trends they should reverse to be… their own existence. In general it is unreasonable to expect individuals to be so enlightened as to work against their own existence, I think.

    • glenstein 3 months ago

      This is why I can't wait for Loops to enable real federation, because it distributes this over a number of instances and isn't putting all the eggs in one basket.

    • fuzzfactor 3 months ago

      >such a platform would be used to reverse social trends unfavorable to the owner,

      Could very well be why Tiktok appeared to begin with, as the original owner's mission.

      You're right, anyone who replaced it would most likely have the same mission.

      Otherwise,

      >expect one of the trends they should reverse to be… their own existence.

      Yeah, that won't happen.

      Very few could afford it anyway, probably only the usual suspects.

      Ah, so Confucius say "Enshittification will be its own reward".

      I guess that's as enlightened as things are going to get :\

cryptonector 3 months ago

> This is going to be an interesting experiment:

Unclear. Biden and Trump both have stated that they will decline to enforce this law.

hshshshshsh 3 months ago

Instagram and Facebook is more popular outside the US and China than TikTok.

  • schroeding 3 months ago

    At least in Germany, for Gen Z, Facebook is quite dead and Instagram co-exists with TikTok, both with >70% of the cohort [1] using them. There is no clear winner. Anecdata, but for freshmen, TikTok is way more popular.

    TikTok-based social media campaigns also e.g. managed to unexpectedly swing an election in Romania (for Georgescu, was later annulled).

    [1] https://www.absatzwirtschaft.de/tiktok-vs-instagram-ein-verg... - sorry, I only found a German source

    • gunian 3 months ago

      Why do you think Instagram is immune from being used in social media based campaign? The only difference between TikTok and Instagram is the recommendation engine they use

      • schroeding 3 months ago

        ... I do not think that it's immune? I don't see where I implied this, sorry if I was unclear. ^^'

        This specific campaign was done via TikTok, though, and had massive impact, which shows that TikTok has heavy usage and is popular, outside of the US and China.

        (I'm not American, I have no horse in this "ban foreign TikTok" race. :D)

dyauspitr 3 months ago

Or Indian content. It will probably end up getting banned in a lot of places over time.

cyanydeez 3 months ago

Until trump lets it sink, tgis is mwaninvless.

Cash bribes are how laws are define now. Is america avaluable audiemce?