Some congressperson is going to be assassinated by a Gen Z terrorist cell and I'll be like
We're quickly going to learn if gizmos and doohickeys are protected by the 2nd amendment
I disagree with adventurism usually but that would be worth it just because it would be funny.
I hope China calls the bluff and lets TikTok be banned, leading to the Gen Z Uprising
This congressional bill was sponsored by nord vpn, buy our honeypot today!!!
They're not even trying to hide the fact they just want TikTok to be Westoid-owned.
Purely just a question of capital flow, they don't care about surveillance.
The context is a chef's kiss.
The US House of Representatives agreed to reauthorize a controversial spying law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last Friday without any meaningful reforms, dashing hopes that Congress might finally put a stop to intelligence agencies’ warrantless surveillance of Americans’ emails, text messages and phone calls.
The vote not only reauthorized the act, though; it also vastly expanded the surveillance law enforcement can conduct. In a move that Senator Ron Wyden condemned as “terrifying”, the House also doubled down on a surveillance authority that has been used against American protesters, journalists and political donors in a chilling assault on free speech.
They care about surveillance alright. They just need to be the ones surveilling and reality inventing.
I'm wondering is if the driving interest is to ensure American companies own most of the social media that Americans use because they don't want to lose the means to surveil large portions of the population. They very much act like there's a threat to state power, and this is the only angle that makes sense.
The alternative is that the state is now dominated by racist boomers that actually believe the red scare propaganda their predecessors made up.
There are two requirements the US ruling class has for internet connected tech: surveillance opportunities and content distribution and censorship capabilities.
That's why we saw the fuss about Huawei five years ago, and that's why there's been a fuss about TikTok over the last five years as well. Huawei isn't a US military or intelligence adjacent or contracted company, so the NSA and Co can't roll in and mandate backdoors into Huawei's networking products. The TikTok available in the imperial core, while already being somewhat controlled by the US military-intelligence apparatus already, still doesn't allow for enough surveillance and equally importantly doesn't allow for enough content control. The US ruling class knows it's losing the narrative war, and is trying everything it can to reign that in.
What politicians actually believe doesn't really matter. Some have bathed in the kool-aid, others know it's just theater. What really matters is what the capitalists believe, and they are pretty clear on what they have to do to maintain power.
The alternative is that the state is now dominated by racist boomers that actually believe the red scare propaganda their predecessors made up.
Phyrric victory hours.
Nobody has ever explained to me why any person in the US should care about a government with no jurisdiction over them might conduct surveillance on them. The government that worries me is the one that has power over me. Maybe I’m stupid, though.
One reason could be because that other government may not be bound to rules regarding surveillance on people who are not citizens of their country, thus can't be held accountable, and then that government could share that information with anyone they want including that government where the person is a citizen.
But then I'm just describing Five Eyes and US surveillance again anyway.
I can see TikTok calling their bluff and then Gen Z just using VPNs to get around it so now all the ad dollars flow exclusively to Chinese companies instead of American ones
That is what will happen
over 1.7 billion users as of 2023
TikTok has 150 million active monthly users in the United States.
I'm guessing that 1.7 billion number is prolly off due to bots and defunct accounts, but still, you don't sell your platform for 10% of your market lmao. I'm not sure if the US thought they would honestly back down just because they're America, if they wanted to ban it because they honestly think it's spying on Americans, or what exactly the play here was, but the obvious one (force them to sell to Americans) was laughably stupid and unlikely to happen for obvious reasons.
tbh that 10% of the market probably contributes about ~30-40% of the revenue
Western users typical contribute >10x more revenue than all other users for adtech platforms, and just ~20-30% of users will contribute to 90% of the revenue (my source is my employers' internal analytics dashboard)
Here is Google's (note that rest of world includes all other developed countries too like Canada, Europe, Oceania, East Asia)
Show
79% of revenue comes from China
8% of revenue comes from the US
Article is more current than the last one too, and that seems to track with what other sources say
That's ByteDance's revenues (the parent company). TikTok is its own subsidiary that can't operate in China
Oh interesting
Do we not really know revenue being generated that is directly attributable to Tik Tok?
Oh interesting
This was in fact brought up by Republicans questioning the CEO of TikTok. They asked him why (or said it was unfair that) the Chinese version of TikTok shows stuff like science, math, and limit children's usage of the app but the American one shows only mind numbing content lol (some of which he defined as pro Hamas, anti American content)
He should've said, "content is created by the user, in line with government regulations; the greater the calibre of the user base and the government, the greater the calibre of the content".
Do we not really know revenue being generated that is directly attributable to Tik Tok?
It'd be unlikely that Tiktok shares this detailed of financials to us. I'd imagine that Google data above got leaked from a random employee, they have a ton of analytics open to all workers
I actually don't see this tbh. Unlike India and US, no other Western-aligned country has a domestic industry in this area to protect and the EU really loves to fine tech giants for free money, so TikTok is overall good for them
I don't think 'good for them' is the thing that matters here though. The EU is a massive market for Instagram and we've seen first hand in recent years where EU leadership's loyalties lie.
It's possible they won't follow the US lead but I wouldn't be too surprised if they do.
Good point... I'd imagine the list of countries that would follow is probably similar to the list of countries that banned Huawei
https://www.reuters.com/technology/european-countries-who-put-curbs-huawei-5g-equipment-2023-09-28/
Better off without the Americans on the app anyway. The smarter ones will just use VPNs
If VPN providers are smart, they'll start advertising that you can use TikTok on them.
ByteDance should simply take TikTok down and replace it a few days later with a new app called “Tik tok 2”
Pretty similar to what US corporations do to shed pension liabilities…
I've always found it darkly comical that United States government policymakers, masters of the art of soft power in the first cold war, is now staffed with people who can't conceive why anyone would use soft power and always leaped to military options. They can't imagine the government of China continuing economic soft-power control over Taiwan for long-term reintegration purposes. Because US policymakers would never do such a thing themselves.
All the time I'm talking about the decay of imperial competency.
Can you talk more about it here? It's a fascinating concept really. It always seems to happen in the decline of empires without fail.
I don't have a detailed analysis or anything, but I always feel that the prior generations of imperialists, especially the immediate post-WWII, had a vision for the planet - total capitalist hegemony under the direction of the US government - and worked hard on a plan to implement it. Those planners were practical, intelligent, and willing to get their hands dirty. They projected one image of themselves - global liberators fighting against tyranny - while knowingly advancing their project in favor of the capitalists. The current generation, who grew up underneath them but not nestled in those highest places of power, bought into the image projected without understanding the reality of its operation or how it was established. They swallowed the cognitive dissonance and believed it entirely, so now they the simple act of military violence as synonymous with "freedom". They have no grasp of how the empire actually operates, they aren't advanced through anything like a meritocracy, and they can't distinguish between their own propaganda and the truth.
It really does seem more and more likely that the current crop of "leadership" in the west believes their own bullshit that they peddle to the masses for sure. A big part of it is probably the collapse of the USSR, they pre-emptively declared "victory" and haven't really bothered to maintain their imperialist project in a sustainable way because they assume there are no (or weren't even aware of) any alternatives. This would explain a lot of their actions towards China. Both begging China to help them out and also putting tariffs on them and interfering with Taiwan. They honestly seem to think that the "lesser countries" are obligated to do what the west demands and the west can just destroy them automatically. There's a similar situation with Russia there too, they assumed that their embargoes would destroy Russia because they are the wealthy and powerful west, so cutting off trade with them destroys economies. But they didn't actually bother to check what Russia's reaction would be and whether they could survive just fine without western trade. Just pure arrogance and chauvinism.
Is it really a decline in competency or just blatant arrogance? Like, they believe they can be more brazen and do whatever they want without pushback because they've been the world hegemon for decades
Why would the US fund China?
...
Ohhhh man fuck these people. I hope the seperatists get cold feet and China is able to confiscate Taipei's assets and create a new government.
You know it is, our 'leaders' are genocidal ghouls on the brink of going feral and dumping the silos.
I'm gonna download tiktok out of principle. And probably never use it.
Surprised more of the leftists here aren't already on it. You're missing out ngl
Hasn't been short form in years though. Typically 1-8min depending on what kind of content you interact with.
Longer than I expected, but still not long enough for my taste.
I prefer videos that are at least an hour in length. I tend to listen to them in the background while I do other things.
Is there anyone on tiktok you can recommend to follow? Also not familiar with it, but curious
Large private companies are effectively the state, so the term nationalisation isn't so far from the truth.
Considering this includes an aid bill with it, would it pass the US senate?
Yanis Varoufakis was recently saying some interesting stuff about TikTok. Basically TikTok is a way for a Chinese company to generate data capital in a way that cant be taxed or restricted in ports, and that drives US capital crazy.
He also connected it with the Huawei ban- basically the US is terrified of China's free universal digital banking, because it could threaten to unseat the dollar as the international trade currency.
Don’t think China will allow it to happen. Someone on here once explained why that’s the case but I can’t remember the details
There are a couple of points to consider the biggest one being that Americans as a user base are but a fraction of the global base,less than 10% iirc, and one of the hardest to monetize. Outside of financial considerations it's worth more to keep tiktok just for the global soft power it exerts on the other parts of the world and to send a message as well.
They aren't required to sell it. That's the end of it. It's not for sale.
Still only going to be banned under trump. They extended it to 9-12 months specifically to keep it alive through the election to hurt genojoe
Part of me wants the parent company to cut their losses and immediately dissolve TikTok US just to spite Brandon and the tech ghouls.
Tic Tac Too?
