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Comment by spiderfarmer | Hacker News Reader

If I were Bytedance I would cut off the US. I certainly would not sell to a competitor. And I’d probably do a licensing deal for the content with a new entity without US based shareholders.

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If TikTok truly is a Chinese psyop, the most effective thing they could do is spend their remaining days sewing discontent with the government, refuse to sell, and let the whole thing burn down, thus riling up "the youths" and teaching them that their own government is a problem.

They could also tell TikTok users to install a VPN and access the servers in China directly.

I actually see this as a silver lining. I want young people to realize the government effects them and can directly ruin things they enjoy. I want young people to be more involved in politics and to vote.

> I actually see this as a silver lining. I want young people to realize the government effects them and can directly ruin things they enjoy.

Would you also consider it a win if young people realize the dangers of social media apps owned by geopolitical competitors able to alter the mindset of the population?

Sure, I guess. That's a very loaded question about a complex issue so I'm not sure how to answer it. But I can say, despite the complexities of that issue, my higher ideals are:

I want people to be more involved in politics and I want more people to vote. Wanting more people to vote is a safe side of history to be on I think.

I also want people to be able to access the content and information they choose. If that is the content and information on TikTok, who am I to deny them? I believe in free speech, morally (I say morally because, yes, I know the 1st Amendment doesn't apply everywhere, morally).

> Wanting more people to vote is a safe side of history to be on I think.

This is going to be a hilarious statement in 20-50 years.

It's funny because on HN of all places, where all wildly successful companies are ran as absolute monarchies, and all the devices we type on are produced by companies ran as absolute monarchies, there's this undeserved reverence for "democracy" as if it's some sacred church or something.

If the voting population is so easily swayed by a video scrolling app, maybe, just maybe democracy isn't such a good idea? Would you work for a company where the CEO makes important decisions based on the amalgamation of 30 second videos that happen to come across his/her feed? I wouldn't. I don't think I want to participate in a country ran like that either. I'd expect the decisions to appear schizophrenic, which quite frankly describes our current political situation in the US.

Like, we have 100K+ fentanyl overdoses a year in the US, and I don't see any TikToks "informing voters" about that. No one cares. In fact, I don't even expect normal people to care about it---in a healthy society they shouldn't even be aware of it. It would take a special person, who is egoically invested in the health of his population to change that. Someone like a startup CEO, ala Washington, Jobs, etc.

So no, you're not on the "safe side of history" by advocating for something that's politically fashionable at the moment. History is written (and re-written) by the winners, and I wouldn't put my money on "democracy".

The wildly unsuccessful companies also run as absolute monarchies, as well as the wildly successful companies that became wildly unsuccessful due to poor decisions made by the monarch. Most CEOs barely understand how their business operates, and they rely heavily on the layers of management underneath them to make and enact decisions. The same is true of monarchs.

"alter the mindset of the population" is such a vague boogeyman. Literally anyone with an internet connection has the capability to "alter the mindset of the population".

Not at scale. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hysterical about it, but to me it seems indisputable that media companies (and this covers TV companies, newspaper companies when you go back far enough) have the ability to alter how a significant section of the population feel about a topic. A single person with an internet connection does not have the same power.

Yes at scale. There are individuals who run social media accounts that reach hundreds of millions of people every month.

You can amass more reach and influence than many of the biggest TV stations / newspapers of the previous generation with nothing more than an internet connection.

> There are individuals who run social media accounts that reach hundreds of millions of people every month.

And who holds the levers to that reach? The social media companies. If they want that account’s posts and I be less visible to users they’ll be able to do it in a heartbeat (and have!)

Sure, I'm not disputing each social media company has the ability to alter public discourse.

My whole point is that there are literally billions of entities (everyone on Earth with an internet connection) who also have the ability to alter public discourse at scale. Hence why it's a vague boogeyman... the phrase "alter the mindset of a population" could be used to describe anything from a Orwellian propaganda machine to a Mr. Beast video.

In the 1990's, you could've claimed "Tetris is a software product developed by a geopolitical competitor (Russia) that has the capability to alter the mindset of the population" and you would've been right, but it would've been a silly thing to get worked up over.

Yes, but that would also mean realizing the dangers of social media apps owned by American companies and our allies also being able to alter the mindset of the population, which is a great thing.

I don't even think you need to cook up possibilities as complicated as "psyop."

It is an absolute firehose of data on users and in aggregate, that is incredibly powerful. "Oh look, more people than usual have been working in office building 12 at Lockheed Martin this week" etc.

There's so many ideas about what TikTok's purpose is. By "psyop" I mean, if the purpose of TikTok is to influence the general mindset of the American populaton, then they'd throw a big tantrum and rile people up.

As you say, another possible purpose is that TikTok is used as a source of data and intel. I suppose it is a fine source for that, but also, if that's all China really wants, they can probably just buy most of that data on the shadowy data markets. The US Government shows no signs of stopping our personal data from being sold.

Gen-Z is already a pretty rockstar generation having seen their older Millenial siblings grow up post 9/11 and then get totally screwed in the 08 crash only to then graduate themselves into a pandemic and a market that is valuing their debt laden college skills less by the day. They started off cynical and so far have been a lot more active than Millenials when they came of age. They might be the group that finally enacts meaningful change. It is too early to tell though but I remain optimistic.

Hopefully the scars from Gaza remain with them and they take a different stance with Israel. A TikTok ban killing off one of the most desired career paths of this generation (TikTok influencer) will have a lasting impact on them when they take the reigns.

> If I were Bytedance I would cut off the US

This is economically irrational to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. If Beijing truly does this, it somewhat cements the argument that TikTok was a CCP policy tool.

I think it is reasonable that Beijing will not allow any sort of sale just for posture purposes. They don't want to be see as forced by Washington to do something and they care less about private economic outcomes than we do here, at least on the surface.

Depends. If you model this as a reputation game, depending on who is the sane and who is the crazy sender, the PBE might might be a pooling equilibrium(i.e makes sense to build the reputation of being a predatory firm).

> makes sense to build the reputation of being a predatory firm

To what end? It isn't going to placate the hawks in America. And it's likely to inflame them elsewhere, e.g. in Europe. The only way you can position it as a win is within China's domestic politics, where it would save face for Xi and his acolytes. (Hence, the inefficiency of dictatorship.)

I wasn't making a concrete case(I have no idea what is either in U.S gov's or Xi's head), was just making the point that when you allow for signals with costs and subsequent belief updates then setting multiples of billions of dollars on fire may be economically rational.

> The only way you can position it as a win is within China's domestic politics, where it would save face for Xi and his acolytes.

do not discount the importance of this; much of CCP's actions revolve around its survival

Then you’d be wasting a huge amount of money for no good reason. If TikTok gets banned Meta will probably vacuum up the audience with Instagram Reels. It would be posturing with no real purpose.

From Bytedance's point of view that's correct but the Chinese gov. would almost certainly interpret giving in to this as an incentive for Washington to ask "which sell off are we going to go for next". You'd effectively send the signal that this is a winning strategy to simply acquire Chinese firms by force. Beijing would almost certainly prevent that sale.

If Reels was any good wouldn't it have become a meaningful force in its own right by now? As it stands from my point of view it is mostly stolen recycled week old TikTok content. That TikTok "magic" is made on their platform because of what their algorithm rewards. Meta does not have that "magic".

My point is that if Reels doesn’t have to compete with TikTok any more (because it shuts down) then that would be a good thing for Meta.

I see where you are coming from but we have to consider why TikTok became so good in the first place and can that really be replicated in a vacuum? Look at X, once they got taken over, others tried to step up (Mastodon, BLueSky, threads). They all obviously grew...but the winner was nobody. People just stopped using that category of app altogether in favor of a different category (discord) or nothing at all.

USA seems to make around 10-15% of their users, and is probably a big source of income. Purely for the economics, this would be lousy idea. Especially as a cut-off from the USA could influence other markets, including losing them too. EU has some movement too, they probably will watch very close what will happen there and act accordingly.

How can they do that without upsetting the record labels?

They get a free pass to use licensed music because it’s a huge marketing channel for the labels. Lose America and that goes away.

What do you think would happen to the value of a company cutting of the richest country in the world?

This is your perfect time to sell the crap before it goes stale. Come on, have we learned nothing?

Maybe I just value not being bullied over being rich.

If you leave the US then you've accomplished what they wanted anyways. And now you're much poorer for it. The upside is you feel like you did it on your terms or something?

Yes.

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