TikTok Deal Is the Shittiest Possible Outcome, Making Everything Worse | Hacker News Reader

TikTok Deal Is the Shittiest Possible Outcome, Making Everything Worse

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China is outsmarting the current administration in every way, see here:

"From Chips to Security, China Is Getting Much of What It Wants From the U.S." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/world/asia/nvidia-china-t...

Not long into Trump's second term I read that senior Chinese officials were calling him Orange Santa. I hope it's true.

I’m pretty sure everyone who sees him for what he is has called him worse.

Christmas has been coming early for China ever since the invasion of Iraq.

> I hope it's true.

Why?

It's funny and whatever they call him, it's still true that Trump has been wonderful for China.

To each their own. I hope that it he has not been wonderful for china.

Hope won't decide whether or not China prospers. Strategic consistency will.

Hope doesn't come into it. It's just a fact. And if you accept it as a fact, then hoping they have a silly name for him isn't the same as hoping Trump's been good for China. Like I say, it's not a question, of course he has been.

“Orange santa” in Chinese would be pretty unwieldy as a nickname. “橙黄圣诞老人” is 6 syllables.

But there has been a meme in China for ages that Trump is secretly a Chinese guy named “Chuan Jianguo” (Jianguo means “building the nation”) who was sent by China to destroy America from within.

There was a good tweet after election day where someone wrote that a Chinese classmate was talking about their religious father in Beijing, who thought that Trump was chosen by God to win the election -- but only as part of a larger divine plan to destroy America. Pretty funny, to be honest.

Agent Krasnov, now this, there seems to be competition for whom that guy is fucking up US more.

Although answer is probably simplest - for himself and his ego.

I cant imagine the mental gymnastic any half decent republican must be going through daily to keep avoiding utter debiliating shame for voting him when doing the proverbial look in the mirror.

There's an irony about the media (including the Times) screaming about Trump trying to fight China economically, and then the Times comes out with a piece about how China is getting everything they want from him?

Makes you wonder what side the Times is really on here.

It seems pretty clear.

I don’t see how there is any cognitive dissonance there. Trump can simultaneously do disastrous things for our economy in terms of global trade with China as well as allow for us to be routed by Chinese strategists.

The Times is on the side of "reporting things that people say."

Can you be clearer about The Times screaming about Trump trying to fight China economically? What are you referring to specifically from them?

All journalist organizations, unfortunately, have an incentive to bias content towards maximum clickbait. The ones that don't end up being outcompeted.

This is not true. You just need to read the business papers, as they have incentives to be accurate. I like the FT, but apparently the non opinion WSJ is ok.

There's an irony to treating the media as a monolithic entity when it is comprised of hundreds of publications and studios and tens of thousands of employees.

Non-techies don't conflate Apple with Netflix. Why do techies consistently conflate the NYT with Newsnation?

I think the keyphrase is the "trying" in "trying to fight China economically". The current administration simply does not have any incentives, well of resources or intellectual capacity to pursue any long-term growth goals.

It's a garage fire-sale and China has just to sit there and wait.

As long as Trump and his friends get rich off it, I'm not sure anyone's being outsmarted, they are arriving at mutually beneficial outcomes.

I'm not sure how much is outsmarting, as much as it is that the Trump administration is happy to make a big show and then sell out the US as long as he and his cronies get their cut.

Hard to call it outsmarting when your opponent is a toddler

And inexpen$ive for other governments to lease

For chips, Trump literally said "we need to get our cut".

Well, Trump is a showman after all.

I think one of my biggest frustrations with tech right now is how credulous they are with regard to China vs USA arguments. I see it on HN regularly.

I am not saying the China shock was fake, or state surveillance is fine, or that they don’t exploit migrant workers, or that their currency manipulation and financial repression were/are good. I just think we should be skeptical that national security arguments are motivated by virtue, especially when “the good” is largely confined to what’s good for USA tech

I don’t know. In a way I don’t think it matters if China are currently actively engaged in altering the opinions of Americans, what matters is whether they can. And an unknowable algorithm absolutely gives them the power to.

IMO the bigger problem is that national security is only part of the problem. An unknowable algorithm controlled by the Ellisons is not necessarily less dangerous than one controlled by China, the motivations are just different.

Yes, and the counterfactual scenario (Ellison or anyone else) does not even preclude foreign manipulation. Other platforms demonstrate this daily

Regardless of where you stand on American politics, it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions.

This is not a left versus right thing. China being unchallenged in the world will spell a quality of life decrease for us in the West. They are not “the good guys.” You’re free to see both parties as ‘neutral’ in alignment, but you still don’t want to have to be the losing party when they come into conflict. My point is China is not going to be sharing any of what they gain with Americans, even the ones who cheer for them - it’ll in fact be coming at your expense.

The CPC having a direct feed into the brains of every Gen Z and younger American is trivially easy to exploit - and there is a 0% chance that they won’t do so next year when they will likely invade Taiwan. If China is in control of TikTok, they’ll boost a ton of propaganda, supposedly people “from Taiwan” who greet the PLA as liberators, explaining how Taiwan being independent is actually oppression, and how they’ve always considered themselves part of the PRC, only evil politicians were keeping them apart. And they’ll make sure to suppress all media that exposes the violence on the ground. Finally, they’ll boost content urging Americans to protest US involvement and to sabotage the military, such as by chaining themselves to ships, etc.

Ryan McBeth has made a ton of videos laying out how this will work, and he does a better job than I have of explaining this.

TikTok is a cyberweapon.

I'd buy these arguments if America was a place that cared about its citizens and not a country that lets a small group of very elite, very rich, people ruin the lives of tens of millions of Americans subjecting them to poverty to make a buck.

The last war China was involved with was 1979 compared to America, today mind you, that is on the cusp of invading Venezuela because Rubio has a moronic axe to grind.

It's really hard to not see the facade for what it is: rich people are upset that their world order is collapsing.

Frankly who care? Give me universal medicare, universal childcare, and public higher education then maybe, just maybe, I might start to care about all this stuff that only seems to make people lives worse not better.

China has used resources to buy alliances with developing countries, like pretty much all of Africa, which they leveraged at the UN to have the communist party recognized.

Sadly you have to start caring for things to get better first.

America has used this same time period to sell out jobs to the lowest bidder, decimate its manufacturing industry to make a quick buck, is willing to sell "critical" tech to "enemies" to make a buck, make billions off of profiting from people's misery.

Why am I suppose to care that people in Africa are pushing for better worker rights and decolonialization? Because the executives as Nestle might make slightly lower money? That big tech can't extract more blood minerals? Boo hoo, it's not like this has ever benefited American citizens writ large.

Also the UN is worthless, if this is suppose to scare people you might lose your hat come election night in 2026.

The companies sold out the jobs, not our government, but it hasn’t done much but make us keep blaming the poor or “colored” folks.

We used to do that too until they decided USAID should be ended.

And I’ll take recognizing a communist party over dropping napalm on em.

That will only work as long as the check clears. Anyone relying on those 'friends' better hope China never stops sending those checks. Ask the US or the USSR how that goes.

Well, sure, but like our ports and other infra that they bought up, that's what they are doing everywhere, so the checks can stop, and they retain ownership of all the economic bottlenecks

No, if things get bad enough, locals have a way of terrorizing any stable uses of those infrastructure. Again ask the US and USSR. What the hell are the Chinese going to do, perform a Gaza on the locals?

Who is currently losing their shit over reduced supply of magnets? imagine if anything gets actually cutoff

Not the poor countries that China supposedly "owns". Countries like Pakistan can't even keep the lights on. Why would they care about rare earth magnets? China provides gifts and in exchange Pakistan provides a pinky promise that will disappear as soon as the checks stop. They can't control their borders much less their crazies. And those crazies will terrorize any Chinese that try to start shit and will make it impossible to reliably take advantage of any infrastructure that China may want to use.

I guess my first question is: why would taking control of TikTok prevent bad faith state actors? X, for example, has a lot of issues with foreign accounts spreading propaganda. It seems more like a “moderation at scale” issue to me.

It also of ingores the cases where state actors' and some wing of domestic politics have aligned interests (USSR & Communist parties in the early o mid 20th century, or Russia sponsoring/infiltrating rightwing countries in Western Europe & America in the 21st century)

X and Meta do try to uncover and scrub malicious state actors, like the investigation of the 2016 Russia misinformation campaign. Maybe, they could have done more, but there is no reason why they wouldn't put an earnest effort as they have nothing to gain from faking compliance. A social media platform owned by a foreign adversary does have this incentive.

X of today is, quite obviously, not the same thing as the X of 2016.

Can't be taken seriously if you're going to elide that "detail".

X may be owned by a crazy Elon, but that doesn't change that X today still has no incentive to allow for malicious state actors, especially under government pressure. In fact, they recently exposed that a lot of extremist political accounts were based out of foreign countries.

Do you not understand social media's business model?

The platform’s direct financial incentives are almost identical to malicious state actors’: to foment extreme engagement. It is not a secret to anyone that people engage most actively with outrage.

Content moderation costs money directly, then costs engagement indirectly.

I’m genuinely confused by your comment.

Maybe it seems identical because China doesn't have any grand short term ambitions, but financial incentive is fundamentally very different. Meta may screw over the American people, but America losing it's superpower status would only hurt them.

I can't parse your first sentence or what the relevance is to the discussion.

You said X has no incentive to allow foreign influence ops. Very clearly, not only do they have an incentive to allow them, but they have an additional disincentive to disallowing them (cost).

The fact those aligned incentives originate from different ultimate goals is totally irrelevant for as long as the two are aligned.

Foreign ops makes up a fraction of percent of X's revenue, if that. Any profit they gained from it cancels out with a similar degree of negative attention from the government, so overall they're incentivized to follow the direction of three letter agencies. A less inflammatory algorithm would maybe cost X a couple percent in revenue. If the government really wants to, they could pressure X to change their algorithm as they can easily cause much more pain to X than a couple percent of revenue.

A Chinese owned TikTok simply doesn't follow the same calculus. If the CEO of Bytedance (note different from the CEO of TikTok) gets a order flood the platform with anti-Taiwanese propaganda right before China invades Taiwan, the CEO would have to follow through even if it causes the value of TikTok to zero. The ban was not about how much harm TikTok has done already, it's about how much harm they can do in a worst case scenario.

Uhhh... you seem to imply that TikTok and X operate under different rules, while actually making the argument that they're the same ("if the govt really wanted to, they could successfully pressure X contrary to X's economic incentives")

Beyond that, you're just asserting a bunch of assumptions as if they're fact.

And all of this is irrelevant. I never argued TikTok/X/Meta are the same. The issue I raised is you positioning 2016 enforcement action as evidence of X's current enforcement posture and then suggesting there is some compliance motivation here (there isn't – there's no relevant law to comply with as far as USG is concerned) and suggesting there's no incentive to allow foreign ops (there is, as demonstrated).

Musk is the malicious state actor.

X is basically a propaganda arm for Israel at this point. It’s obviously under control of a nefarious state actor.

Which is odd considering how much of X is owned by the Saudis.

they have money and power to gain by faking that compliance, to the extent that if the foreign power gets what they want, meta or twitter gets what they want to, eg. removal of regulation or a ban on regulation of their AI products

> X and Meta do try to uncover and scrub malicious state actors

Like this US one?

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...

> This is not a left versus right thing. China being unchallenged in the world will spell a quality of life decrease for us in the West.

America's incompetent leadership is self-inflicted. Biden's 2020 campaign strategy was pro status quo ante - which I find similar to your appeal to "normalcy". Unfortunately (for future American global primacy), this message did not resonate with voters in 2024. I suspect "getting back to normal" is not enough for Gens Y & Z, who have already lost a class war whose existence they may not be aware of.

Young people have legitimate gripes w/ housing and higher education. I would not describe this as having “lost a class war”.

I would describe the over-fiscalization of housing and education loans designed to increase profits for shareholders as different fronts in the same class war that young people have already lost.

The language of class war precludes any sort of repair of the situation. I see a ton of young people at work outside of my group within the org who should be getting paid better. When we're in management we have a responsibility to try to argue for narratives that lead to that outcome. And when we vote we need to remember that things that look bad for us homeowners like allowing big development companies to come in and raze all of our houses and build townhomes and apartments for rent might be necessary to keep the bad situation from getting worse. I think in the end what will save us is the big demographic crunch that's going to happen in the next 15 years, because there will be a lot of housing stock suddenly on the market with no buyers. We're all going to get an opportunity then to fix a lot of these problems. Or, if we do nothing and let the status quo reign, our kids will suddenly find themselves renting everything they use for the rest of their lives.

I think unless we acknowledge the class war, there is no way of winning it.

Big Capital is not my friend and its not most peoples friend, even if some of us here were lucky enough to be useful to them for now.

I'm not talking about the war with Capital, I'm talking about the war between the middle and lower classes.

> When we're in management we have a responsibility to try to argue for narratives that lead to that outcome.

My previous bosses would move to fire me or get me transferred out of their org if they found out I valued getting my employees paid more, over literally anything else that moved the bottom line.

> And when we vote we need to remember that things that look bad for us homeowners like allowing big development companies to come in and raze all of our houses and build townhomes and apartments for rent might be necessary to keep the bad situation from getting worse.

This has been explained for years. At best the reaction gotten from homeowners can be paraphrased to, “yea, I hope you keep the commons working, but I got my bag”

> Or, if we do nothing and let the status quo reign, our kids will suddenly find themselves renting everything they use for the rest of their lives.

There’s other options too after the ballot box stops working and your life is permanently worse under the status quo, but you are not allowed to discuss those options on Western social media sites

Violent revolution isn’t a solution though. We have almost a whole continent (Africa) as a case study for what happens when people finally get fed up with corrupt, incompetent governments and stage coups. The scariest warlord takes charge for a while and (often with a lot of additional bloodshed) chooses different winners and losers, until the cycle repeats.

Sheltered Gen-Z Americans, who have never known a disordered society love to talk about revolution, but they are so ill prepared for something like that. It’s not even funny. To be clear, none of us in the “first world” are prepared for something like that.

Looking at the FDR years it came to the elites almost losing everything for them to finally dole out a few crumbs. We are in uncharted territory though. If AGI comes to fruition assuming it does not run the numbers and just emigrate to China it will lead to a world where most people are not needed for GDP growth anymore. How is that society going to self-correct itself?

The German social safety net was introduced by Bismarck, a conservative.

You know why he did it? Credible threat of violent revolution.

That's what it takes.

I just want to be clear before we continue the discussion, so that you do not claim that I am trying to get a "gotcha" moment on you.

When we are discussing the United States of America, the nation founded on one of the most famously successful violent revolutions, to the point that we teach our children to celebrate it every year, your claim is that violent revolutions can not be a solution?

> there will be a lot of housing stock suddenly on the market with no buyers.

The only way some millennials will own house is by inheriting them from boomers, and the rest of the housing stock will be mostly bought by corporate investors. Everyone else will rent until death, and provide reccuring income to make the graph go up.

Still, it's like being on a plane and you're unhappy with the destination so you vote for a new pilot who has promised to immediately crash the plane into the ground.

>it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions.

In Gen Z's eyes, America is bad for Americans. That's what happens when you build a low trust society. America spent decades trying to build up a strong rapport among citizens and they tore it down and sold them out in a single generation.

Maybe china will be worse. But the appeals to nationalism simply will not work among our youth. We abandoned them, they will see the village burned to feel its warmth. Already happened in 2024.

Recognizing that our tech leaders are attempting to march us into a sort of technological feudalism is not an inherently gen Z take.

I don’t think this is exclusively a Gen Z thing. I’m Gen X and could not agree more with this assessment.

Yes, this was a good 30 years in the making, so anyone still in a career will feel it. Even some younger boomers would feel the after effects of tbis, especially those who didn't get to own a house.

Gen Z is simply unique as the "full immersion" generation. It's uniquely hard to ignore the youth unemployment for kids who are spending more than ever to be educated, or being hard locked out of minimum wage jobs our parents would scare us with because they lack a bachelor's degree.

I certainly don't envy young people entering the job market rn. But China's youth unemployment rate is far higher than America's. To come away from this thinking American capitalism is bad and "communism" (which doesn't really exist anymore on a large scale) would be better would be pretty misguided.

CS new grads today have the highest # of interesting potential startups to join than ever before

Not according to...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelcollins/2025/12/15/compu...

or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46291504

Your statement might be correct, but the dust has yet to settle for us to be able to determine that.

America did not build a low trust society though. Just the opposite.

The issue is that trust was intentionally sabotaged.

Does it really matter? The result is the same regardless of how it came about.

If they think capitalism is bad for Americans, they’d really dislike being part of some failed state version of the country. Again, China isn’t going to come redistribute all the billionaires’ wealth to the poor American zoomers. They don’t give a fk what happens to any Americans. They barely care about their own commoners. They represent the Party’s interests exclusively. Whatever enhances their power. Ideally if they can screw the US billionaires they will, but with the wealth all going to China.

Replace China with Trump you have the talking points of 2024. Still took a year of rampant incompetence and corruption to convince Gen Z otherwise.

China's soft rule will not be as incompetent.

Here are the scenarios that are playing out

1. China overtakes the US -> US society directly decines and thats it. (Your scenario)

2. China overtakes the US -> It takes out the elites with everyone else (what Gen-Z likely wants to see)

3. US manages to hold on -> Elites continue their trajectory of snapping everything up leaving the crumbs for everyone else. (The best case scenario pro-US people can hope for right now)

4. US manages to hold on -> They somehow decide to reform and implement v2.0 of New Deal. (The dream of the bernie sanders wing ie. a pipedream at this point)

You are really showing your age with your attitude.

Put yourself in Gen-Z's shoes. What is realistic at this point? What can even millenials hope for?

The best case is that they end up being a transitional generation that helps their kids survive their childhood and grow into a decent adult life. The worse case is managed decline.

Either way Gen Y and Gen Z are done for. This amazing American system you defend has ruined these generations long term outlooks and Trump's bumbling has already written their final chapters.

The main difference is that at least the CCP is economically competent. Our current republican overlords are also fucking us over and they're economically dumb as rocks.

They certainly cause economic damage with their stupid and/or corrupt takes on tariffs, mainly. But the other party wants to elect clowns like Mamdani who would crash everything.

You're being partly branwashed by american rich media. It's not about disliking capitalism. It's crony billionaires running the country and destroying it.

China has pulled many poor people or of poverty. Generations. You don't see this in media. You're comment is just misinformed and wrong.

A country building out its export industry means more people get jobs and out of poverty. Chinese leaders didn't do it for the benefit of their people. They only do anything in order to stay in power inside of the party so they can be rich. That's how the Chinese political system works. Please stop it with the Chinese leaders are benevolent narrative. It's clearly bunk.

You speak as if you know this to be true. What’s your evidence? Vibes? Be honest

Not everyone here is American.

From a European standpoint: The ideal outcome is a stalemate between China and the US, with us as the kingmaker.

We could basically do the same thing as Yugoslavia did during the Cold War and play both sides against one another, extracting concessions from both.

Every country wants to be in that position.

Y'all've got a lot of headwinds, and America should be helping you with them instead of posturing and pretending to be friends with our enemies.

America needs to get closer to Europe and India, democratic East Asia, Mexico, Vietnam ... not this bullshit we're doing right now.

> Every country wants to be in that position.

I agree. But not many are one of the largest economies in the world and the world's most prolific regulator.

> America should be helping you with them instead of posturing and pretending to be friends with our enemies.

I also agree, but unfortunately the American electorate and its elites have proven deeply untrustworthy. I wish it wasn't so, but that's what happened.

With that in mind, the best outcome for us is to hope for American power to decrease relative to China to increase our own leverage.

That only works in a world where Europe can replace all of the US forces in NATO. I'd like to see that, but it's gonna take a long while and a big commitment, so I'm sceptical.

> it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions

And what says has China on the advances of Americans geopolitical ambitions? I’m not saying they are the good guys obviously, but at this point as an European between China maybe invading Taiwan and the US openly threatening to take control of allied territory (Greenland) or on the verge of starting another war for oil control (Venezuela), I’m not sure what’s worst for "the west". And that’s not even talking about climate change, science, etc. Who is more aligned with a sustainable future for the world?

> TikTok is a cyberweapon

I’m far more concerned by the YouTube, Twitter/X and Facebook cyber weapons that have been radicalizing and destroying our societies for more than a decade. Just the other day a fake video about a coup in France trended on Facebook and not even our President could have it removed. Have you also see the plan of the US to weaken the EU by targeting countries to make them leave the EU? Again not saying China are good guys, but it’s time Americans freaking out about China have a hard look in the mirror.

As an Australian, this is broadly my take too. People may have explicable concerns about TikTok but at least China can’t systematically deny a foreign citizen access to digital society entirely as the US has done to Nicolas Guillou. If young people are open to anti-American propaganda it’s only because America has created that opportunity.

Its harder and harder to see US from outside (aka 95% of the world) as force of any good, apart from some amount of self-serving. So what you claim is largely invalid, like it or not. Maybe it will change in 3 years, but nobody is holding their breath.

Its just another side, with its own motivation, these days backstabbing and insulting those few friends that stubbornly still linger around for historical reasons, changing opinions frequently. Unreliable as are its sophisticated warfare products. Morals what?

America this america that, it's called US! You are US citizens! What's good for America? for the US to stop forcing every other country in America to add tariffs for any product coming from China

I'm tired of this "China is exploiting Gen Z", the US is a propaganda machine and has been for decades. Now they are mad that China is taking their space.

In what way will China "being unchallenged" result in a QOL decrease for us in the West? You didn't actually say why that is.

Because they're official plan is to be entirely self sufficient and export to everyone. This will decimate the remaining industry in the West.

> or state surveillance is fine, or that they don’t exploit migrant workers, or that their currency manipulation and financial repression were/are good.

can you clarify if you’re talking about China or the US?

Heh, good point. I would say the internal migration of Chinese Foxconn workers is a bit different from our situation. But there are parallels

Have you seen what ICE is up to?

Yes it is extremely evil. I was just saying domestic migration is a different thing than cross border migration. Different kind of exploitation, different kind of scapegoating

Regardless of country, citizenship, "national security" arguments are always bad faith if pushed by the relevant "nation state"

Make no mistake this isn't about protecting US citizens, it's about consolidating power around conservative billionaires. It's not just limited to Tech. The Ellison family are media moguls. The Ellisons just want to gain more power, whether we're talking money or the ability to manufacture consent. They bought this opportunity from Trump: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2025/09/oracle-invested-mil...

Yes. Equally/more likely that Instagram/YouTube are embarrassed and mad at how swiftly TikTok came in and made a much better and more popular product.

They built upon a French product, every change in the French product was adopted by a copycat (app by tiktok creator).

Every attempt to ban the copycat app on Google store by the French was useless, since a new copycat app would pop up the next second.

So it's not like tiktok is some new innovation. What they did is still amazing, but malevolent, but credit where credit is due.

Wow, I'd never heard this. What French product?

The french product was called Mindie, the start of endless short videos with music, the reels, and the copycat was chinese musical.ly (later bought up by Bytedance).

Mindie failed because they got attacked by copyright claims by the big US tech, which obviously the chinese copycat was immune to, since China.

Interesting. I wonder if any of the Musical.ly creators ever saw Mindie.

https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/16/from-a-failing-product-to-...

This sounds like revisionist history.

They can do whatever they want with it with the sure knowledge that the users will never leave it. Tiktok is the digital equivalent of "getting kids addicted to heroin"

Not true, YouTube is the dominant player in short form content, and while TikTok has a loyal fanbase, I don't think it's a wall YouTube couldn't climb.

For those that are downvoting this based on vibes, please feel free to get recent view counts that prove me wrong.

YouTube is the dominant player in Western Fronts. TikTok is the dominant in Asian fronts.

TikTok is Chinese Youtube & YouTube is Western TikTok

Both are cancer.

Youtube Shorts, maybe, but Youtube is obviously broader than TikTok, and it is not just a dopamine machine, unlike TikTok. Can you find research seminars on TikTok?

> Youtube is obviously broader than TikTok

Well yeah, it's existed longer. You can't compare one service like YouTube, a streaming platform for video vs TikTok which is a viral social platform.

> Can you find research seminars on TikTok? TikTok isn't nor the platform for such. This link has results.

https://www.tiktok.com/tag/researchseminar

Did you check that link before you posted it?

TikTok has longer content, some of it quite academic, but it's all vertical. I don't know about any one else's TikTok, but mine has a dedicated STEM feed if I scroll all the way to the left at the top. The problem is their vaunted algorithm will prioritize whatever content you happen to come across and then linger on, which tends to end up not prioritizing eg math content until you reset your algorithm and search for content you want the fresh algorithm to prioritize.

>it is not just a dopamine machine, unlike TikTok. Can you find research seminars on TikTok?

Sure, you can find white paper previews on Tiktok.

I can't because they gate the video search. Joke's on them, I ain't signing up.

YouTube Shorts is littered with reposted content from TikTok and Instagram, with a layer of AI slop on over it all. It seems overrun by people who don’t make content of their own, but were looking for a quick and easy payday.

YouTube keeps pushing it harder and harder. On the AppleTV, search often returns 90% Shorts, with no way to filter them out.

My relative runs a digital marketing company. The only platform they can reach 16-20 age bracket is via TikTok. Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for older people still work, but are fading.

I think the main problem is a YouTube "customer" is there because they're looking for long form content, and someone looking for sort videos is probably already either a TikTok or Instagram user with no particular reason to switch.

Comparing views cross-platform is not a very useful study and YouTube routinely adjusts what a view means. Shorts changed earlier this year to count all playbacks and loops without a minimum watch time requirement. https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/333869549/a-change...

Not downvoting you but such a broad statement is pretty meaningless if you don't segment by age group. Also Tiktok captures almost the same percentage of US ad video spending - that wouldn't be the case if youtube had so many more viewers that matter to advertisers.

Tiktok is not heroin. Tiktok does not make you vomit if you quit using it. Tiktok does not give you a 5 year life expectancy. You can't overdose on it and die. Tiktok does not make you rob a grandma to get your next fix of it.

I hate social media more than most people do, and I don't use tiktok and don't think anyone else should, but can we all please stop comparing a mobile phone app to using heroin? It's misinformed and dangerous to make rhetorical comparisons like that.

Metaphorically speaking, Tiktok is heroin.

>Tiktok does not give you a 5 year life expectancy

12 year old life expectancy then?

> The lawsuit, filed in the US claims that Isaac Kenevan, 13, Archie Battersbee, 12, Julian "Jools" Sweeney, 14, and Maia Walsh, 13, died while attempting the so-called "blackout challenge". Four children died because of, compared to one, who injects?

Heroin invokes addiction, TikTok does that. Heroin can cause physical dependency, TikTok brews this. Heroin is highly addictive, isn't TikTok to the young viewer?

I still hold my point that TikTok can be distilled and viewed as a form of Digital Heroin. Evidence shows.

How else do you describe it's nature?

Metaphorically everything can be anything

TikTok is in no way like heroin, stop using that false analogy

> TikTok is in no way like heroin, stop using that false analogy

How is it not a form of digital heroin when the effects are digital?

Heroin destroys your mind, And one could argue without moderation any other thing can do too.

bruh are we living in different realities?

some people feel like they are addicted to short form content but it’s really nothing like a drug addiction much less an addiction to something as devastating as heroin

I guess so. 36 and having seen the internet from IRC to how it is now arguing over some internet forum because views are different. How old are you?

TikTok causes chemical release in the brain and which can cause other self psychological damage. Heroin causes chemical release in the brain in the brain, and can cause other self psychological damage.

Both are addictions, both are hard to fight. Some find it easier some find it hard.

The effects of one are more devastating sure, Alcohol is more damaging than Caffeine; I'm not ruling that out.

However the effects of Heroin which comes with addiction and the cravings are some-what mimicked within the realms of TikTok.

To op below: I'm now rate limited, so I can't reply directly.

A drug, a real life substance that is designed to alter human chemistry. Cannabis, Caffine, MDMA, DMT all alter your brain chemistry organically.

You cannot compare one or to something that is man-made digital. You can however compare the effects of a substance that is organically designed to that of something is digital. The relation of effects of TikTok to Heroin are very similar.

Social media is being designed as a digital service to alter human chemistry. It works, why do you think the world is in utter shit? Why do you think social enterprises pay big bucks to exploit the human psyche by hiring sociologists/psychologists?

The TikTok icon on mobile devices is strategically designed to manipulate and trigger a response.

Facebook is a grand example with the A/B emotional testing they did with Cambridge Analytica which that is that is far worse then heroin IMO. At least with Heroin you need to inject.

> TikTok causes chemical release in the brain and can cause other self psychological damage.

You're literally describing any activity that someone enjoys generating natural dopamine, and then comparing it to a drug that crosses your blood-brain barrier and mimicks your brain's chemistry to give you a super-charged chemical version of that. The difference in dopamine levels is orders of magnitude. Your brain re-wires itself to handle the level of dopamine produced and you start only feeling normal if you're constantly using the drug. I would be surprised if Tiktok generated even 1/10th the dopamine level of using methamphetamine. It all honestly sounds quite fun, but my awareness of the consequences will prevent me from ever trying them.

Eating a good meal, having sex, finishing writing your first novel, winning a race, doing breath work, doing yoga, rock climbing, and an unlimited supply of examples generate dopamine in our brains the same way that Tiktok does. They can all ruin your life just as much, if you allow them to.

A much better comparison would be to describe Tiktok as a "digital slot machine", and indeed slot machine mechanics have been heavily studied by social media platforms to make usage more habitual. Nir Eyal's Hooked was an interesting and informative read on this topic. If he describes social media as heroin in the book I'll happily take the self-own.

I think age is a lame argument here but fwiw i also grew up on IRC and 90s internet - I just have a less rosy view of that time.

> TikTok causes chemical release in the brain

Basically everything causes a chemical release in the brain. For example HN does as well, would you compare posting on HN to heroin?

> both are hard to fight

I know and knew people both addicted to heroin and to TikTok. Let me assure you that ditching a short-form content addiction is VASTLY more easy than ditching heroin.

> the effects of Heroin which comes with addiction and the cravings are some-what mimicked within the realms of TikTok

This is true for everything that humans enjoy. Next you gonna say that talking a walk in nature or working out is like heroin because I enjoy it and I’m addicted to it (if I don’t do it every day I feel bad and I have a compulsion to do it every day)

> why do you think the world is in utter shit

I disagree with that assessment, the “world” as a whole is actually much better than it used to be 30 years ago. Of course that might not be the case for you individually but then this thread is more about your feelings than an objective observation of the world.

> At least with Heroin you need to inject.

Most heroin users don’t inject which ones again shows you don’t know anything about it outside of tropes and cliches.

“At least with TikTok you need a smartphone and internet and swipe to unlock” - see how dumb that makes me sound?

Don’t get me wrong I dislike the tech hegemony and social media as much as you - I just think your way of arguing damages your position more than it helps it.

I state my age so at least I can represent myself as someone with experience in this world and who has seen the internet deteriorate from something fundamental awesome to a wash-rag floating in a swamp.

I see it as Digital Heroin. If others, you don't, fine.

Social Media is addicting. I use none and explaining it as " digital heroin" may be an extreme way to present the thought but at least it's bluntly represents the curse of it. Finally, it's not the teenagers at fault. It's the governments in the first place for allowing this. I saw it on the wall when Facebook came to be back in 2007.

part of the definition of addiction is that it has a negative impact on your life, so your nature walks and exercise arent comparable without describing that harm

TikTok (along with the other platforms) is more like cigarettes, or sugar.

It's highly addictive. The negative effects are somewhat diffuse and may take a while to really impact your life, but they're very real.

And, rather importantly, it's legal and widely available, and the industry behind them is suppressing evidence of their harms and making tons of money off of addiction.

> How is it not a form of digital heroin

Because "digital heroin" is a nonsense phrase used as a thought-terminating cliché.

> when the side-effects are the same of?

Assuming that this is intended to be something like "when the side effects are the same as those of heroin?" then the premise is false; the effects (side or otherwise) of TikTok are not meaningfully similar to those of heroin.

If your own child had a choice between using tiktok and using heroin, and they had to choose one, which choice would you prefer them to make?

Two things can be bad. Rationalizing one due to being less lethal is an ignorant argument.

Depends, how rich are they in this hypothetical scenario?It's being poor that's the problem, and we know that's true because of the many rock stars who've lived with a heroin addiction for many many years.

If it's the first thing you think about when you wake up, and it kills you to sleep at night, and you think about it all day, sure, one's a highly addictive habit that destroys lives, and the other is heroin. Which is also a highly addictive habit that destroys lives. Funnily enough, one destroys lives because it's legal, and the other destroys lives because it's illegal. But if you're taking your phone to bed with you at night, and it's the first thing you check in the morning, before you even have a thought to yourself, okay, you're not injecting it with a needle under a freeway underpass but after you get fired for watching TikTok on the clock and can't pay your rent, is you're landlord gonna care when you don't pay rent whether you got fired for drugs or a smartphone addiction?

TikTok is a Skinner Box.

You're right, heroin is merely physical addiction. TikTok is psychological, emotional and social crack for young malleable minds. Produced by the subjects of, and in cahoots with, an aggressive totalitarian regime that has about as much respect for human life as Oracle has for its customers.

Also assuming your heroin isn't tainted it isn't toxic and you can have a normal life expectancy.

Can we all stop pretending it's a not an issue?

Not comparing it to heroin (or crack) is not saying it isn't an issue.

Most of the toxic bullshit comes from America though.

China just wants us to buy cheap Chinese crap.

>TikTok is psychological, emotional and social crack for young malleable minds

The US did a good job of taking those away, so it's hard to complain when others come in to fill that void.

Only people with no actual life experience with drugs or drug users would make such an asinine and overtly hyperbolic statement as that.

Everyone knows Facebook/Meta is actually the heroin. A product intentionally designed to steal your life and enrich its owners. Duh

It's like how the Sackler's did everything they can to make opioids more addictive and increase profit margins, there is virtually no difference between this and Zuckerberg hiring psychologists to make his apps more addictive.

Even Safeway and Target are hiring psychologists! With programming as a career coming to an end, maybe I should go back to school.

Do you have any life experience with drugs?

Is this a satirical post? I'm really struggling to comprehend it coherently

Did you mean nicotine?

> Only people with no actual life experience with drugs or drug users would make such an asinine and overtly hyperbolic statement as that.

Ma'am withdrawing from tiktok cannot kill you. Consuming tiktok cannot kill you. Tiktok does not make you shit yourself

I empathize w/ your take. I've occasionally responded similarly to the thoughtless use of "cancer" in shallow analogies, as a survivor who's also watched it kill several people I dearly love. I don't have direct experience w/ heroin, but the film "Requiem For A Dream" was unforgettable and helps me better understand its evil.

Unfortunately, whether it's a deadly drug or a deadly disease, these casual references are unlikely to drop from public discourse anytime soon. And I personally would rather live in a world where insensitive or potentially-triggering language is gently discouraged, than one where the pendulum swings too far the other way towards censorship or radical left woke cancel culture. Words can be unintentionally callous without being "micro-aggressions". (And I say that as a liberal progressive.)

Thanks for posting in a personal and persuasive manner, instead of anger. Yours is the more effective approach anyway.

>these casual references are unlikely to drop from public discourse anytime soon.

I'd hope to hold this community to a higher standard than "the public discourse".

Honestly, why? You see the exact same nonsense over and over. I've seen nothing to indicate that the community is any better than most other moderated forums. Worse than some.

Completely anecdotally, I've seen Tiktok get replaced almost entirely by Instagram Reels in the sample space of, well, links to funny videos people send me. It doesn't count for much, but I do feel people might have slightly overestimated how much sticking power a platform like this has.

Actually I think there’s an important distinction there: the draw of TikTok isn’t people sending videos to you, it’s the algorithm that automatically suggests them to you. I’ve heard it describes as uncanny at matching your interests and Reels isn’t anywhere near it.

(I don’t use TikTok so I don’t know first hand!)

I’ve used both and I think that’s cope. There’s more younger creators and maybe more varied content on TikTok.

If you want proof, watch someone’s feed with them. Invariably they will start to apologize. Classic “he’s different when we’re alone” rationalization for an addictive substance

> Invariably they will start to apologize

This is my experience as well. I don't use the app, so my only direct experience is watching with someone scrolling their feed.

>If you want proof, watch someone’s feed with them. Invariably they will start to apologize.

Is that unique to any one social media? Our internet browsing is pretty intimate. I dont even want my family seeing my moment to moment feed.

I tried it once. It uncannily picked up on what I was interested that day. However, by the second day I had moved on to new interests, but it didn't. It keep trying to push the same thing as the day before that I was no longer interested in anymore.

Perhaps the algorithm has gotten better since, but I had no reason to want to use it after that.

I wonder if that's generational.

A lot of the people in my age group (Millennials) decided that TikTok was where we were going to get off the "hot new social media platform" train.

The Zoomers and GenAlpha kids seemed to be the people really using it, but I'm just a crotchety old guy with a bald head and a gut and an office job at this point, so I don't know what the hip young people are up to with their Tok Clocks and their loud rock music.

That's generational.

They are both very similar obviously, but the social network on one isn't the same as the other.

While TikTok is clearly still dominant, I don't think it has much of a moat.

If Insta and youtube shorts get enough traction, there's no reason creators won't simply post to each of them to maximize their reach. The legacy platforms are heavily courting/promoting short form video, why leave possible monetization on the table?

Hell, I'm too old for their demo, but I see TikTok videos posted to Reddit and even BlueSky.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not like Zuck is any better than Ellison in the context of the article. Conservative consolidation of media is the point: Twitter, Meta, TikTok, are all the same flavor of Skittles with a slightly different colored shell.

>Tiktok is the digital equivalent of "getting kids addicted to heroin"

I heard this argument about TV and videogames before

Was it false?

Right, seems like "dopamine sickness" (or whatever we want to call ADHD these days) is rampant in ways that were relatively easy to predict.

Yes!

Have you every heard a heroin addict comparing heroin to TV?

No but everyone has been or has known someone who rages when they lose access to their videogames, and everyone knows someone who has played videogames to the point that it is detrimental to their school or work obligations.

You can replace "videogames" with literally anything and it still works.

Sports, dance, family, etc.

Everybody knows too many people for an anecdote to make videogames and heroin the same. It's like pointing out some school shooter played a violent video games; so did the people they shot. You need to disprove the null hypothesis; not show that there exists evidence.

> You can replace "videogames" with literally anything and it still works.

That's like saying "one who cannot go without food is the same as one who is addicted to heroin." You're engaging in superficiality to the point that all distinction is made meaningless.

> It's like pointing out some school shooter played a violent video games

That's a totally different argument

>You're engaging in superficiality to the point that all distinction is made meaningless

Yes, that's the point.

>That's a totally different argument

Not really. It's the Millenial equivalent the satanic rock scare. Politicians will always use these kinds of tricks to influence opinion and even enact laws.

I want more than sound bites if we're going to compare addiction to something as well studied as hard drugs.

Was it true?

Nah, Tiktok got popular not just because of the Algo, but also because of the creator fund which makes the Algo rich with good content. Since they stopped that 2 years ago Top creators (different from influencers, who make money from advertising/sponsors) are moving to first Instagram Reels and now Youtube Shorts because that’s where the money is at. Any firm who wants can build an audience by paying creators. It takes time though, because the creators have to convince their audience to switch.

Does anyone actually not realize this was to stymie criticism of Israel? You Netanyahu bragging about how this is central to winning the propaganda war. Ellison is the biggest private donor to the IDF. Put it together.

Did you create this account just to say stuff like this? Incidentally, TikTok is still as anti-Israel as ever.

Yeah, that's why they are trying to censor it and they are doing it actively, now they will do it more effective

+1 - the timing of the bill makes this extremely clear.

That and to promote the regime’s white supremacist agenda. (Expect to see a lot more nauseating propaganda along the lines of the memes that official Administration accounts have been posting.)

Jonathan Greenblatt (CEO of the ADL) was on record saying "TikTok is Al Jazeera on steroids" before the ban bill got a lot of wind.

What's ironic is that ultimately their suspicion that TikTok was influenced by the PRC to push an anti-Israel agenda was most probably incorrect. Israel lost the narrative in the West because it simply did a lot of shitty things in the war, and everyone from homeless people to war refugees carry around an HD camcorder in their pocket now. I still see shocking videos of what the IDF is doing in Gaza on a monthly basis, on Instagram of all places.

Scaremongering about the PRC was just the public facing justification for the ban bill. Its not like they can just come out and say "The Israelis have me on tape violating children and so I need to pass this bill to let them take over the biggest social media platform they don't control already so they can face less criticism for their genocide".

The deal itself feels messy and political, not like a serious solution to data or security concerns. In the end, the risks are still there, and it’s hard to see what regular users actually win from this.

> it’s hard to see what regular users actually win from this

They won't. The entire point of this charade is to remind Americans we can't expect any better than instagram or youtube.

lol are you really suggesting that China, out of the goodness of their hearts, made TikTok with the objective to give Americans “better” trash social media sites?

No, of course not. They're simply more competent.

Yes. Because the US forgot what soft power and actual nationalism entails. China didn't.

Its not out of goodwill, but the objective of "don't be ad ridden slop maximizing shareholder gain" was a bar you didn't even need to step over

The point of the whole Congressional exercise was to grab ownership of a highly lucrative social network on the cheap to the American investor class. Whoever won the presidential election got to choose the winners.

This and censor opinions inconvenient to American interests (genocide in Gaza)

>The deal itself feels messy and political, not like a serious solution to data or security concerns.

2026 in a nutshell, yes. The Daily Watergate of American history.

Is there some provision that enabled the executive branch to keep extending the purchase deadline?

If not, the sale is illegal. Congress passed a law saying that TikTok was to be banned. Not "can be sold after a bunch of backroom deals by tech aristocracy that happens to be friends with an incredibly corrupt President", but banned. SCOTUS agreed that the law held up to scrutiny.

The law [1] does not work as an magic all encompassing "ban". It says operating and distributing the app is is unlawful, and the consequence is a huge fine and the enforcement mechanism is suit from the US AG. Nothing says that a sale after doing something unlawful is illegal.

The bigger issue is that the Trump directed the AG not to enforce the law. So something is plainly illegal but is de-facto legal because of executive pronouncement. That is extremely worrying because one aspect of totalitarianism is that the dicta of the ruler has effect of law.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815/...

Yeah it’s illegal. What are you gonna do about it

For all the people who appear to want a say in this, perhaps you should advocate for a structure in which you actually have a say? As in, nationalization of TikTok?

All other outcomes on the table, you have no input or direction on this company. And people seem to be justifying US interference on the basis that its influence warrants public direction.

Well then that same logic would justify it being controlled by the public, no?

One thing I've been trying to find since the deal was announced, and this article doesn't help either, is when this actually takes effect, i.e., when does Larry the Lawnmower get access to everyone's TikTok's comments?

I am still baffled, because wasn't there a bipartisan law passed banning TikTok? Is that just being ignored while a deal is orchestrated to sell it to Larry Ellison (and install Barron Trump on the TikTok Board of Directors)? The enforcement of the law is confusing to me here.

You're not wrong. It was very clearly illegal for TikTok to maintain operations in the US since the law started applying, and yet the US government ordered everyone to disregard the law and they just went along with it.

This is another sign of the US' decline. The refusal to follow inconvenient laws.

Technically, the law did allow the president to approve a one-time extension if there was a deal under negotiation. But every subsequent extension (I think we’re on number 3 or 4 now) had no legal basis in the text of the legislation and both Apple and Google are clearly in violation of the law for not banning it from their app stores after the 1st extension

This is a bug in the system that should be corrected. The fourteenth amendment guarantees everyone equal protection under the law.

Allowing the executive branch sway over the enforcement of laws that they're ostensibly beholden to prevents enforcement at all, which robs the citizens of the United States of the protection they've been afforded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_Action_for_Childhood_...

Why doesn't Facebook sue if this is the case? Get TikTok taken down and leave Instagram as the only alternative.

Your president can disregard laws to favour outcomes he prefers. How do you not see that if the president can willfully ignore laws, you have no justice at all anymore?

Even this is too charitable. A short timeline of January 2025 would be something like this:

- Jan 16: The Supreme Court issues its opinion, upholding the legality of the TikTok ban. The Biden administration declines to enforce it, preferring to let the incoming Trump administration handle the matter.

- Jan 18: TikTok voluntarily turns off its services. Google and Apple remove the app from their respective app stores. Trump declares on social media that he will sign an executive order "to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect".

- Jan 19: TikTok restores it service after being assured by the incoming Trump administration that TikTok would not face penalties.

- Jan 20: The Trump administration signs the aforementioned executive order.

However, Trump's executive order was untimely (the law already should have gone into effect), and at any rate it's dubious that the executive order would've been legal regardless. The TikTok ban (PAFACA) had a specific provision for when an extension could be granted. From Wikipedia:

> The president may grant a one-time extension of the divestiture deadline by as long as 90 days if a path to a qualified divestiture has been identified, "significant" progress has been made to executing the divestiture, and legally binding agreements for facilitating the divestiture are in place.

Notably, none of these requirements had been met. There were no identified buyers; there were no binding agreements. The Trump administration's refusal to enforce the TikTok ban might have been the first lawless act of the second administration, and it happened only within hours of Trump being sworn in.

> and install Barron Trump on the TikTok Board of Directors

Can cronyism become more blatant?

Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma?

That's the (obvious, I guess) comparison I was thinking of too, but IIRC correctly the issues there were 1) allegations of bribes (which ended up being false/that witness arrested by the FBI for lying about it) and 2) Biden improperly leveraging the State Dept (which was also found to be untrue by two different Republican Senate investigations).

Now if the issue was Hunter Biden being on the board at all -- even if independent of any Joe Biden dealmaking -- then I'm very curious how the Republicans sounding alarms back then react to the Barron Trump TikTok board seat now.

hey, everybody hates this too. biden isn't the president anymore.

If he's found to be guilty then lock him up? I genuinely don't see how this matters?

seriously?

did I miss the news that the US government forced a deal that transferred partial ownership of a foreign company to Burisma, and put Hunter on the board?

Quoting TFA: "It’s worth noting that none of this was really legal; the law technically stated that TikTok shouldn’t have been allowed to exist for much of this year. Everyone just looked the other way while Trump and his cronies repeatedly ignored deadlines and hammered away at the transfer."

They I understand it: There was a deal to ban TikTok unless ownership changes --- the original intention was no Chinese involvement, but now it seems "ownership change" means the ownership is amicable to the current president. There was also something of a grace period for when that ban went into effect if TikTok could show they were actively in the process of finding a new owner. The current president basically just kept insisting that grace period was in effect while he constructed a bid for ownership that aligned with his and his friends (business) interests.

Basically, Congress did not do its job and ignored the very law they voted for.

> Basically, Congress did not do its job and ignored the very law they voted for.

It feels like this is increasingly the case. Not sure what the solutions are.

Congress can't really ignore a law though, anymore than I can.

Am I ignoring the TikTok law? No, because it's not my job to enforce it.

The executive branch is the one that ignores the law.

Congress have the power to remove a president.

> Is that just being ignored while a deal is orchestrated

Yes. There is a series of executive orders (eg [1]) that literally say "To permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed, the Attorney General shall not take any action on behalf of the United States to enforce the Act ...". The "PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS ACT" only allows the US AG to sue for enforcement, so this essentially is completely waiving enforcement.

This is why congress often gives independent agencies or private actors the right to sue in an act - because the DOJ cannot be trusted to fairly enforce laws if there is even the slightest political or economic valence to them.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/savi...

???

That's dumb.

I mean..

what about ..the slightest political or economic valence to..

um..

the Attorney General?

or even worse..

what about ..the slightest political or economic valence.. to ..independent agencies or private actors.

That's, like, explicit corruption isn't it? We'll give this private actor or independent entity the exclusive right to be the defacto enforcer for whatever laws. (Laws they themselves probably asked, sorry "lobbied", for?)

If you can trust some ..independent.. entity, I'm sorry, that means you can make the cops independent in the same way and trust them to enforce that law. If it's impossible that the cops can be set up to be independent in a way that prevents corruption, then how is the ..independent.. entity set up that it prevents corruption?

I hadn't realized that was going on. That's insanity. Wow we're corrupt.

The TikTok deal seems to be more about empowering US corporations than anything else. It seems as if they hate all forms of competition under the orange man ruling the USA right now, so of course TikTok must be crushed (not that I use any of those antisocial media, it is just an observation made).

We see something similar in Europe in that Musk burps out the EU must disband after they fined his company for breaking local laws. It's like a really stupid variant of corporatocracy dominating the USA right now; at the least in the past it was a bit more subtle. Now it is like barbarian posing as oligarchs are having crazy fits. I think 99.9% of their wealth must be confiscated and given to The People - too much wealth makes the mind weak and leads them to act as tyrannical parasites.

I hate to tell you this, but that's how most countries operate. Actually, China is a shining example of digital protectionism. Turnabout is fair play.

They keep mentioning "innovation". What's innovative about shoveling mindless junk in people's faces 24x7? We've got a lot of these platforms already. Do we need an even MORE mindless one to dethrone TikTok? Is that a win for literally anyone other than investors?

Is TikTok fundamentally different from HN in some way? Seems like you could say that about any platform you don't like.

I don't think HN has ever claimed to be especially innovative.

Fundamentally it’s super different from HN, what do you mean?

The short video platforms are almost exclusively individual-algorithmic garbage-recommending platforms designed for maximum passivity.

A couple major differences here are:

* Not video

* Meant more for commmunity/interactivity

* Not individual algorithmic

So a site like this optimizes for most-user-upvoted content, to try to surface content that is found interesting by people who are presumably somewhat like you. That seems pretty different from a self-serving platform that optimizes for whatever keeps you from blinking.

> Is TikTok fundamentally different from HN in some way?

absolutely!

  - not ad driven 
  - not follower / likes driven (yes, there's karma but there's no concept of following people, notifications for likes, etc.) 
  - not engagement driven 
  - not algorithmically driven (yes, the home page is, but you can just do /active for example, or /new ; I rarely go the home page) 
  - there isn't an endless amount of "new content"
  - no hosted content (you have to link to something to show it)
  - no revenue

“Shittiest Possible Outcome” is basically the motto of the current administration.

Now Republicans directly control X and Tiktok. I place the blame on their supporters, especially those who are engineers and others who are on Hackernews. The most frustrating aspect is they won't face any justice for their support.

This tells me nothing except the author’s politics.

lol, so 'We know this is crack cocaine mind-control spyware. Give us a seat in the control room'

> if these folks were all so concerned about U.S. consumer privacy, they should have passed a functional modern internet privacy law applying to all U.S. companies and their executives.

This is the way. I wonder if we'll ever see the day that consumers get a fighting chance.

As a Chinese, I think we know from the first place that this is all about political and money. It's interesting to see lots of people "shocked" by this outcome.

Now it won't be Beijing having coercive access to your data

It'll be Larry Ellison, a slaver nation, and a PE surveillance focused firm having consensual access to your data! And the US government!

we did it guys!

It is not access to our data that was the concern. It is manipulating the opinions of Americans by controlling the algorithms that determine what Americans see. How is that concern alleviated by this deal? It is not. And that's the problem with this deal. The algorithm is still controlled by China.

“Your information” was never the important thing. That’s a sideshow. The important thing is that controlling an algorithmic feed that is wildly popular amongst multiple generations of Americans means the CPC can control American public opinion at the touch of a button. Literally no country would allow a sworn adversary to do that. Why do you think China doesn’t allow Facebook or Twitter? And those aren’t even government-controlled American companies (sure, they’re subject to coercion, but not to the extent Chinese companies are).

OK so now "Larry Ellison, a slaver nation, and a PE surveillance focused firm" can "can control American public opinion at the touch of a button"? That seems just as bad.

What do you mean by "a slaver nation"?

They're probably referring to MGX, one of the major investment groups. It's the UAE's state-owned investment fund.

Having 3 separate companies own it means one of them can’t just decide tonight to call whoever’s in charge and tell them to change it, or else they’re fired and lose everything. I do actually assert that these three entities are going to have divergent interests. Also I get that you don’t like Saudi, and yup we all know MBS had that journalist killed (totally F’d up), but overall they’re still not a government hostile to the West — especially when compared to several neighboring countries.

I am not excited about any of it, but like... Corporations in America can still refuse/fight government requests for data, they can disclose how many requests they get for the year, and there is judicial oversight on the requests.

In China if the government makes a request for data the courts are not involved, the company has no ability to push back and they cannot disclose any info about government requests.

US courts aren't exactly as independent as they used to be (and some of them, like national security and immigration courts never were). The difference between the US and China is at best a matter of procedure, not outcome.

> Corporations in America can still refuse/fight government requests for data

They can also voluntarily give it over, and as part of a contract for money

So ByteDance maintains majority control. A huge win for the American people as always.

Ah but it’s the best outcome for Israel so they can now suppress videos from Gaza.

ETTD

Welcome to the Ellisonverse

This rant has some truth in it but it goes too far and comes off as unbalanced. From the conclusion:

> This was never about addressing privacy, propaganda, or national security. It was always about the U.S. stealing ownership of one of the most popular and successful short form video apps in history because companies like Facebook were too innovatively incompetent to dethrone them in the open market. Ultimately this bipartisan accomplishment not only makes everything worse, it demonstrates we’re absolutely no better than the countries we criticize.

I think when PAFACA passed and set up a ban of TikTok, it was in fact about privacy and propaganda and national security. It’s just that the Trump administration looks at every single situation as an opportunity for grift and corruption, and they abused the opportunity.

The deal does shift algorithmic control and moderation to US based entities. I am not sure what that means in reality. Maybe they can just say they’re in control but choose to use the existing system? Who knows. The terms of the deal look like they help with the original concerns on the face of it.

>> This was never about addressing privacy, propaganda, or national security.

I disagree. I think was about making sure Americans see the "RIGHT" propaganda.

Taking the bait here: are you suggesting that the CPC has our (everyday Americans) best interests at heart more than a randomly-picked American company?

American companies just want to acquire all our money. China wants to convince us to withdraw from the rest of the world so they can take over everything they want.

I'm also a little "meh" on the "innovatively incompetent" bit.

People get tunnel-vision. Facebook is for "Facebook things", TikTok is for "TikTok things". Reels, stories, whatevers isn't "TikTok".

It's why Facebook bought Instagram. No matter if Facebook copied Instagram down to the pixel, it still wouldn't be Instagram. And it's why the branding has remained consistent.

Same thing with Google and YouTube.

It's why these acquisitions happen and why these companies become something else. Google to Alphabet, Facebook to Meta, etc.

This just forces the sale of TikTok to someone in the U.S.

Are they even stealing anything or are they buying the top?

Its a Trump deal. Everything the man touches turns to shit.

But inside that shit, tiny little gold nuggets

... that end up being like gold Christmas chocolate coins ... filled with shit.

(TL/DR: It's shit all the way down).

Social Media is the digital equivalent of "getting kids addicted to heroin" reply

> This was never about addressing ... national security

You have no idea what you are talking about.

The stated purpose of the law was to get TikTok out of the hands of a foreign adversary, and that was accomplished. Remember when Trump took office, and lots of people were worried he would refuse to enforce this law?

It sounds like the author would have preferred that a different group of billionaires take over.

I wish no one had taken over. The threat of TikTok is easy to understand right now. It’s going to be much more murky after this deal is complete.

From a libertarian perspective, I also thought this was a bad law. It totally abandons faith in the idea of free speech, and admits that China’s “great firewall” was the right idea. I think it’s better to document any lies that were being spread on TikTok, and counter them with truth.

If your first reaction is “but that won’t work!” then you don’t really believe in a free speech based society, and all that’s left to do is argue over which group of shadowy billionaires should get to control everyone.

> If your first reaction is “but that won’t work!” then you don’t really believe in a free speech based society

While I believe in free speech, free speech isn't some panacea. Nor does it magically exist without protection from powerful interests. What good does speaking up do, if "algorithms" managing the majority of speech have big money riding on promoting irresponsible speech at the expense of sidelining responsible speech.

This isn't a neutral open marketplace of ideas, battling on merit. It is a pervasively manipulated market for profit, and those who will pay to tilt it.

The right way to deal with surveillance and dossier based manipulation by external actors, is not to pick on one actor, but to make surveillance and dossier based manipulation illegal for all actors.

Nobody buys a TV wanting their watching habits to end up impacting what ads they see in web views, and vice versa.

That kind of behind the scenes coordination of unpermissioned data, as leverage against the sources of the data, is deeply anti-libertarian. Anti-liberty in both right and left formulations. (The idea that "libertarian" means the rich have a pass to do anything they can achieve with money, underhanded or not, is a corruption of any concept of individual liberty.)

The enshittification of the world is being driven by this hostile business model. Via permissionless (or permissioned by dark pattern) coordinated privacy violations. And it isn't just foreign adversaries who are benefiting at societies cost.

The constant collecting, collating, and converging of data on anyone doing anything that pervades the private/public economy now is deeply parasitical.

Free speech, like every other right, only achieves its real value in a healthy environment. I.e. a healthy idea competitive environment. I believe in voting too. But similarly, voting only matters in a healthy competitive candidate environment.

>and all that’s left to do is argue over which group of shadowy billionaires should get to control everyone

Whichever is better for the majority of people. This the same answer for democracy

i think the "but that wont work" is about visibility.

who are you intending to tell about these tiktok lies? how do you know if youve told the right people? what algorithm is going to pick up your corrections as equally viral as the lies were?

if youre actually going to do it, i think you need your own shadowy billionaire funding paying the various social media companies to pretend that your version of the truth is popular. maybe multiple shadowy billionaires.

> and that was accomplished

It's very optimistic to assume that China was beaten here.

Bytedance still owns the algorithm and 30% of the new company. This new wrapper firm is just being granted the license to serve as Bytedance's operations, essentially. All the stuff about it being 'trained on US content' and 'overseen' by Oracle is smoke and mirrors. This is really just the zombie of the deal that was done four years[1] ago and then quietly scrubbed.

This isn't significantly different than the way TikTok has been operating all along, the only difference is a few of the administration's cronies are able to get their heads into the feeding trough.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/19/trump-says-he-has-approved-t...

> The stated purpose of the law was to get TikTok out of the hands of a foreign adversary, and that was accomplished.

I don't know how we conclude that:

> The new U.S. operations of TikTok will have three “managing investors” that will collectively own 45 percent of the company: Oracle Corporation, Silver Lake, and MGX.

> the private equity firm Silver Lake (which has broad global investments in Chinese and Israeli hyper-surveillance)

> 30.1 percent will be “held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9 percent will be retained by ByteDance.”

Now we have oligarchs, plus a major surveillance investor group, plus the Chinese.

This doesn't seem to be a solution to anything except that "a deal was made", and any further attempts at cleaning up credible risks have so many players to deal with, they would be DOA.

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