Tech Monopolies Are the Reason the US Now Has a TikTok Problem
promarket.org
promarket.org
I will start by saying that monopolies are bad and we could do away with them. That said, current actions have little to do with their legal and market position, but rather geopolitical place US is in today.
There is a clear indication that US executive branch decided to go after China. And if history is an any kind of teacher, the rest of the government will eventually fall in line ( especially since it is hard to argue that China is a benevolent dictatorship ).
US does not have a TikTok problem, because of tech monopolies. Monopolies just may end up benefiting from US foreign policy.
No.
The US executive branch didn't decide that. The machine decided that, during the Obama Administration (not Obama's decision either), and they have been thinking about - plotting about - this confrontation as far back as the early 1990s at least. Four-star general Wesley Clark talked publicly about that the Pentagon has been expecting to have to confront China for ~25+ years.
There are countless article you can dig up on this, through much of the Obama Administration years. Here is a good one:
FAS (Federation of American Scientists) 2012:
"Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration’s “Rebalancing” Toward Asia"
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf
"In the fall of 2011, the Obama Administration issued a series of announcements indicating that the United States would be expanding and intensifying its already significant role in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in the southern part of the region. The fundamental goal underpinning the shift is to devote more effort to influencing the development of the Asia-Pacific’s norms and rules, particularly as China emerges as an ever-more influential regional power."
Pivot aka confront China.
Read the section called "Areas of Continuity" where they discuss how Obama's pivot was actually just furthering policies began during the prior Bush Administration. It's a system in action, spanning administrations.
They're doing it in a gradual multi-part rotation. They called it the "pivot to Asia" during the Obama years. That pivot was about dealing with the rising China. Each cycle gets more aggressive and with more resources devoted toward it. With Trump it's called the confrontation with China. They're escalating as they go. The media, as part of the machine, also does its propaganda part as they get their marching orders in part from the military industrial complex: during the Obama years the media called the strategy the pivot to Asia; during the Trump years, they like to use "confrontation" in their news titles; they're providing the cultural atmosphere for what the machine is trying to steer us toward.
The machine, as I'm half-jokingly calling it, is the system of government and power that exists administration to administration and sets continuity policy. It includes structures of power like the Pentagon. That's how the Cold War was operated for example, they didn't entirely flip flop every administration with how the USSR was broadly handled. Most of the government continues from one administration to the next. There are occasionally large, animating ideas that propel the US superpower into action, challenging the USSR was one of those, and China today is another. Nearly the whole of the US system has recognized it can't co-exist with China as previously hoped, most of those pieces that make up the multi-headed power of the US are in agreement to confront China now, spanning from the FBI to the intel community to the US military to the executive branch to almost all of Congress (mostly only varying by degree now).
Now, I do think you have a point about entrenched bureaucracy and China 'planners' ( but the same is true for Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and a number of other advisors trying to push their pet agenda ); they may be a part of the branch, but the president, for better or worse, is its head ).
In a sense, US has gotten really 'lucky' with Covid. Here is a good propaganda reason to get people and the world against China. And yet, notice how varied the reaction was to the president's approach ( also for varying reasons ).
To say it is all part of a long term strategy is to ignore how chaotic it has been thus far.
But keep in mind, a revolution is chaotic. And it is a revolution because this administration was the first in US and world to stand up visibily against China. Via tariffs. Via bans. Via sanctions. Via communique. Until the rest of the world recognized the danger and followed.
So I would cut this administration some slack. Just like you would for a startup that's trying to change the status quo.
A lot of Americans have a tendency to think of their country as naturally owning the internet. I personally find it quite alarming.
I do acknowledge that the US throws its weight around diplomatically and tries to impose its laws as an international standard.
On a pervasive level, it's in the way a lot of Americans on social media tend to assume that all content is necessarily intended for or addressed to them somehow. For instance many people I know have had an American hate train jump on their tweets that were talking about one issue or the other from a local lens - as though we should be constantly filtering ourselves and our language to cater to America's sensibilities. I've never seen quite that level of arrogance from anyone else.
"Facebook didn't kill Vine alone. Leadership issues, increased competition, and monetization struggles all contributed."
If an app like vine was as successful as it was made out to be, why would it's fate hinge on being able to access a contact list from another 3rd party app?
Chinese apps, games and e-commerce have always been their customers.
As for Tiktok, it was spending like crazy on big platforms at the time, and the product didn't seem popular back then, so why not take that sweet money as much as you can.
Probably both
That sounds suspiciously like the tech giants are private enterprises in name (and profit) only, and are essentially part of the state, tasked with advancing the country's/state's interests on the digital front. It's rarely explicitly laid out by a proponent (who's just disappointed that it allegedly didn't work). It's usually marxists criticizing it as stamocap while everyone else says that it's completely baseless, private enterprises etc etc.