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Comment by ironyman | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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.

#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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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