Ancestors

Written by evacide on 2025-01-17 at 18:11

I would like for all of this to end in the repeal of the TikTok ban, but it's almost certainly going to end with Trump negotiating the sale of US TikTok as a gift to one of his cronies, which is why Elon and Zuck are elbowing each other so hard right now.

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Written by Diane on 2025-01-17 at 18:28

@evacide

Byte Dance has agency here too.

What if they prefer having Americans be pissed off at the US government?

America is a large market, but we are not the largest market for tiktok (that honor goes to indonesia)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1299807/number-of-monthly-unique-tiktok-users/

Dropping the US would be a significant loss for them, but I don't think it'd be that much worse for them than the pain the US inflicted on it's own business community with all the sanctions on Russia.

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Toot

Written by The Penguin of Evil on 2025-01-17 at 18:48

@alienghic @evacide Bytedance is a chunk owned by the Chinese government. Nothing will happen until Trumpy is in office and then the polite beating each other over the head with baseball bats will be conducted between Xi and Trump's lot until they find a solution.

Not sure Musk matters, he can't act easily without Chinese approval because he's got so many assets tied up in China.

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Descendants

Written by Simon Green on 2025-01-17 at 19:53

@etchedpixels @alienghic @evacide Someone will end up offering Trump a personally enriching deal that ends up with Tik Tok staying where it is and Trump able to claim he has fixed the problem, whatever "the problem" is (or can be temporarily redefined to be).

It might cost Bytedance a bit but will pay off in the long run vs. the alternative. Whatever Trump really thinks about China, it will be easily sidelined by the chance to earn a few dollars.

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Written by Diane on 2025-01-17 at 20:13

@Salty @etchedpixels @evacide

A lot of the strife between the US and China is about jostling for international power.

The US is the aging great power with a bunch of internal political problems.

China is the latest challenger threatening the US's historical dominance.

The US is mad about this and is trying to cut China down to size, but China has plenty of options to maintain their international influence.

The result of that is I think there's value to China in taking a hard line position with the Tiktok ban and seeing which parts of the world is willing to follow the US in blocking tiktok and who's willing to continue socializing with China.

It's not a challenge that is likely to lead to any violent tests of power, but it is a challenge that implies which country has more international influence.

And I think not only are the governments fighting over power, I think the companies in each sphere of influence are also testing each other for their relative levels of influence.

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