TikTok Says It Will 'Go Dark' Without US Court Intervention | Hacker News Reader

TikTok Says It Will 'Go Dark' Without US Court Intervention

businessinsider.com

19 pointsthis_weekend31 comments

Two interesting things can be infered from this:

1. TikTok would literally rather shut itself off from its largest market, than divest its ownership from PRC; says a lot about who's really in control here.

2. They really believe they have an edge in their algorithm that they would rather go dark than divulge it.

Tiktok's tentative US buyers (probably a consortium led by Steve Mnuchin or Jeff Yass) says there is no way the Chinese have the technological edge here and US engineers can successfully replicate it so I lean towards no. 1.

Then why haven't they?

Why is Instagram full of boomer normie slop?

You can say youtube is close, but Shorts aren't their prime source of income.

Instagram is full of boomer normies because Instagram is full of boomer normies.

Tiktok may have an interesting algorithm but it certainly has a different crowd and culture of what to post than other platforms.

I've heard it like this:

FB: Boomer, Gen-X, Older Millenial -- sharing stuff with friends and family.

Insta: Millenial and Gen-Z -- visual story telling.

TikTok: Gen-Z -- entertainment.

I'm from the BBS days, and I use FB for the Groups. Insta/Tiktok don't really have groups.

The alternative would be that they say they will probably capitulate. How would that help them?

Is it true that the lawyers have argued against US gov's interest in reducing CCP's propaganda in an effort to overturn the case? I realize lawyers don't represent the truth, just the law, but that is not a good look if so.

If #2 os true, then why don’t any of the other similar app or features of other apps work as well as TikTok from a technical standpoint? My experience with TikTok is that purely from an execution standpoint of showing a video, being able to manipulate it (scrub through, alter speed, show/hide comments, etc), and then show another video immediately, no other applications - or the similar features of Instagram and YouTube - come close. Not to mention how successful the TikTok shop is.

Or they are just saying this now, as strategy to try to trigger intervention.

Or 3. They think the ban will eventually be overturned, and in the mean time some percent of those who want to use it will simply find work-arounds.

This seems to be, for China, a break from the plaza accord era. China has a lot at stake (more than tiktok), and they are not capitulating at cars either (they have been warned by Janet Yellen about "over-capacity"). If Tiktok gets banned in the US, this will accelerate the conflict.

It doesn't help that today's politicians are not saving face either. You have gangoons who have nothing to do with tech that wants to buy-out the falling cow.

Why give up your cash cow lol

Your cash cow risks becoming just a cow if you have nowhere to sell its milk and cheese.

To add - they’re threatening a shutdown as a negotiating ploy(in Asia you start walking away to drive a bigger bargain) - their primary goal is not monetary, it was about geopolitical control. Then selling will risk divulging their data/algo/tactics (employees moving to new owner) and they cannot afford.

#1 is hypocritical. The US is banning TikTok for the same reason China banned Facebook, they can't use foreign platforms for domestic propaganda like they want to. The scaremongering about China brainwashing the US population is nothing more than projection. They both want to brainwash their own population, first and foremost.

But that's the thing, the US isn't banning TikTok, the US is forcing Bytedance to divest its majority control. If Bytedance would rather shut down than do that, it's their choice to make.

The framing of this as a "ban" is truly one of the silliest aspects of this story, and allows the drawing of false equivalencies such as you've done above.

"I'm not taking your farm from you, I'm just forcing you to sell it to my friends, or close it."

An outright ban would be less circuitous.

An outright ban would be unconstitutional, and wouldn't be necessary. The issue is who owns and runs TikTok, so why not use legally extant powers to correct that? I'll add that this isn't a country versus a farmer, or even a country versus an individual... this is the US vs China.

So please, spare me the loaded analogy, there are no poor farmers here.

> The issue is who owns and runs TikTok, so why not use legally extant powers to correct that?

This is a step short of expropriation. If there are real security concerns, prove them and ban the product. It only matters who runs TikTok when you want control of it, not public security.

Weird that you focused of the word "farm", it could be easily taken as an online content farm.

> But that's the thing, the US isn't banning TikTok, the US is forcing Bytedance to divest its majority control

To me this is indistinguishable from a ban, and I suspect the same is true for many of the politicians who actually voted for this. The semantic difference you bring up is irrelevant to most people.

Or it could be that TikTok is just getting started which it seems it is and selling it off to a US company would just be giving away a lot more potential future profits and close the door completely to operating in the US again.

Good. The fact that TikTok has basically two different apps. One showing pedagogical content in China, and another fine tuned for disinformation and dissent they show in the west, tells me they are a tool from the Chinese oppressive government to undermine democratic countries.

I’m glad they are about to be shut down.

https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-betwe...

Same here but for a totally different reason. As I mentioned before, until US Based social media is given the same access in China as TikTok has in the US, they should be banned in the US.

This believe goes back to "reciprocally", that used to (still is?) a big part of diplomacy in the past.

Every Western social media platform is fine tuned for disinformation and dissent, and when it's neo-nazis or flat-earthers or anti-vaxxers or people planning a violent larp on the White House, Americans will (at least claim to) defend it to the death, because free speech and dissent are absolute, inviolate rights granted by God. TikTok is simply giving the West what it wants, and what already works in our market.

The issue you have is with the mirror TikTok is putting up to the cesspool that is American culture, not with China doing what is just good business.

I agree with calling out the hypocrisy of the parent comment, but this reply seems to be taking things a little far the other direction. On the Western side, it's a cesspool culture, but on the Chinese side it's good business?

On the Chinese side it's good business to appeal to the cesspool, because that's what Western platforms are also doing, and succeeding at.

If they ran TikTok in the West they same way they do in China, with as many quality of life and content restrictions, it wouldn't work.

One might argue that that enforcing screen time limits, maybe age requirements, and having algorithms prioritize educational (and propaganda) content would result in a better, healthier and less toxic social media environment but many Americans would consider that nanny-state censorship and mind control and such an app wouldn't be as entertaining or popular.

The only reason it works in China is a degree of authoritarian control over media that isn't (currently) legal here. I don't doubt that given a more free market TikTok would be forced to regress to the same mean.

> but on the Chinese side it's good business?

I don't think they said that - they are saying it is good business on the American side.

The Chinese government restricts all social media in China - it isn't aimed at Western Apps. China allows social Apps where the government can censor content and the government has other means to control dissidence.

We need some Venn diagrams!

https://archive.is/jQRhn

Trump has stated that he's against this ban. But my working assumption is that Meta's recent announcements around moderation, diversity, and new execs are a quid pro quo for Trump supporting to the ban in office.

The Supreme Court seems poised to uphold the ban though, based on recent oral arguments ¹, in which case Trump would face some pretty significant hurdles in trying to overturn it. The bill has already been signed into law by President Biden. Trump would have to try to get a new bill through congress to overturn the previous TikTok ban bill.

¹ https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-tiktok-china-speech...

My theory was that Meta offered Trump what he wanted partly in return for changing his stated position to support the ban. Given that the SC now seems likely to uphold the ban, Trump wouldn't have to do anything.

Ah I understand, that's an interesting theory and would explain why Meta's suddenly reversing/changing course on a bunch of their policies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com