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Comment by elfbargpt | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised this passed (in the house at least) at this point in the election cycle. My suspicion is that ByteDance will in fact refuse to divest, and TikTok will get banned. Which I don't think the electorate will like very much

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My suspicion is that they will try to divest but the CCP will refuse to let them do it. Thus proving the point behind the bill.

> My suspicion is that ByteDance will in fact refuse to divest, and TikTok will get banned.

ByteDance will sue, and the court case will likely go to the Supreme Court. If they left the USA without any legal contest, then they would be walking away from a huge amount of money.

Many people above the age of 35 hate TikTok almost entirely because young people like it, the same as (in the past) video games, rock and roll music, etc. Young people don’t vote at the rate older people do, and they won’t in this election in particular.

> I'm surprised this passed (in the house at least) at this point in the election cycle

AIPAC is willing to sacrifice Biden's re-election chances for this short-term victory because the other candidate and his whole party is also going to be favourable for them, possibly even more so.

Not sure what AIPAC has to do with this. The tiktok bill was brought up as a separate measure, just voted on the same day.

Tiktok has videos of the effects of the war in Gaza. Young people watch these videos. Hence young people don't support Israel.

Of all people I know who don't support the Israeli government (including myself), none of them use Tiktok. It really seems a stretch.

Do Twitter or YouTube have no videos of the war in Gaza, or are such videos a uniquely TikTok thing?

TikTok does not actually have many such videos since they get taken down far more aggressively than they do on, say, X/Twitter or Telegram. However, TikTok has the eyeballs of the vast majority of the young people and they talk about the ongoing atrocities nonstop, and it's crushed the image of both Israel and USA over the past 6 months. From that angle, it's a huge national interest issue for both the countries' ruling establishment to get the censorship level (and censorship priorities) of such topics on TikTok under better control.

There was talk about banning / divesting from China well before the current flair up in Israel/Palestine. I don't think it has anything to do with AIPAC.

Agreed. It is rather alienating to a demographic and large numbers of business owners that both parties desperately want to connect with. I kind of think this will churn in the courts for a long time, and achieve only ill will.

The electorate will love it.

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