Comment by jmyeet

Comment by jmyeet 2 months ago

14 replies

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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 2 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.

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  • throwawayq3423 2 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.

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    • JumpCrisscross 2 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.

      Reply View 4 replies
      • throwawayq3423 2 months ago

        1. Then why is that investor so aggressively against the forced divestment? (not a ban)

        2. Bytedance will certainly lose value if its main product loses one of its main markets.

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      • NickC25 2 months ago

        He also has a major donor who owns Meta, and a major donor who owns Twitter/X.

        He also has a daughter who is the only American to hold patents in China without having to license IP to a Chinese company.

        We are about to see some strange mental gymnastics out of 1600 Penn.

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blackeyeblitzar 2 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.

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  • matwood 2 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.

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  • antifa 2 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.

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    • onemoresoop 2 months ago

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

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insane_dreamer 2 months ago

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

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  • criddell 2 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.

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