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Businesses China

ByteDance Prefers TikTok Shutdown in US if Legal Options Fail, Report Says (reuters.com) 213

TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer shutting down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S., Reuters reported Thursday, citing sources. From the report: The algorithms TikTok relies on for its operations are deemed core to ByteDance overall operations, which would make a sale of the app with algorithms highly unlikely, said the sources close to the parent. TikTok accounts for a small share of ByteDance's total revenues and daily active users, so the parent would rather have the app shut down in the U.S. in a worst case scenario than sell it to a potential American buyer, they said.

A shut-down would have limited impact on ByteDance's business while the company would not have to give up its core algorithm, said the sources, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media. It said late on Thursday in a statement posted on Toutiao, a media platform it owns, that it had no plan to sell TikTok, in response to an article by The Information saying ByteDance is exploring scenarios for selling TikTok's U.S. business without the algorithm that recommends videos to TikTok users.

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ByteDance Prefers TikTok Shutdown in US if Legal Options Fail, Report Says

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  • Obligatory... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @01:03PM (#64424792) Journal

    "And nothing of value was lost"?

    • Re:Obligatory... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @01:13PM (#64424822) Homepage
      Correct, and shutting it down is a good start. Now do "X", Facebook, and every other social media platform (yes, including /.)
      • Re:Obligatory... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @01:17PM (#64424846)
        So, a news site that allows people to comment is social media?

        Well then there goes IRC, forums, and everything else.

        Maybe settle down there boomer.
        • Re:Obligatory... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by eneville ( 745111 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @01:58PM (#64424986) Homepage

          I've never thought of grouping niche forums and IRC in the "social media" category. My (brainwashed) mind has always thought that social media was the icon set that people put on brochures (Fecebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter). Unless it was in that set, I didn't see it as social media.

          IRC is, IMO much more social as it's much more immediate than the others, I've just never seen it branded like the others.

          Curious to me why I've never done that.

      • Re:Obligatory... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JamesTRexx ( 675890 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @01:24PM (#64424870) Journal

        You can shut down all social media, and also forums since you want to include /. as well, but those are not the problem.

        The problem is people can't handle such sites because they cling to bling and awe and extremisms instead of applying critical thinking on the information coming their way.
        It's a psychological (educational) issue, not a technical one.

        • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          except that fore the most part education and the ability of the public to think critically have not changed THAT much.

          Its the social media that is new, and the degree of near constant coupling to it via smart phone that is newer still.

          So using a little of that 'critical thinking' clearly you are wrong and social media is very much the problem.

          • by suutar ( 1860506 )

            "Hasn't changed that much" over what timeframe, please?

          • Re:Obligatory... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @03:21PM (#64425342)

            In a way, you are both correct.
            Critical thinking in population, as a whole, is largely the same, statistically speaking. I'd go as far as saying it somewhat improved in time, say, compared to 20, 30, 50 years ago.
            At the same time, Social media, as an intercommunication tool, is, in theory, a good thing. It allows people to find others alike, establish likeminded groups, easily exchange information, etc.

            The problem is compounded.
            1. Information on social media is not curated. Anyone can excrete the hugest whopper and spread it around like organic fertilizer on the field.
            2. The field itself is very fertile. The advance and cheapening of technology made it very easy for pretty much everyone to access Social media, which if filled to the brim with uncurated information. Petri dish, meet mold.
            3. Nobody tries to filter said misinformation at the source. Social media corps would often engage in the proverbial own chest beating, but the sad reality is they don't give a flying fuck for many, many reason, the core one being as simple as possible: it makes them a shit-ton of money.

            I've been on Facebook for 15 years now. I've seen it slowly degrade and decompose. Right now, about a third of all ads I see in my feed are scams, deepfakes, misleading, outright lies and so on. Not to be confused with "I don't like them". They are objectively false. Therefore, for the last few months, I started reporting the biggest offenders.
            Do you know how many of those egregiously fake reported ads were removed?
            Zero.
            Invariably, no matter what, the response is "We’ve taken a look and found that this ad doesn’t go against our Advertising Standards."
            Again, just to be clear: I am talking about painfully obvious AI-based deepfake ads, asking people to "invest" in this or that, using deepfaked footage of prime ministers or known anchormen, basically organized scams. None of them were even acknowledged by Facebook as problematic, let alone banned.
            There's the occasional (although a lot rarer) hard porn ad squeezing through; the video section has turned into a shitfest; the whole platform is basically anarchy right now.

            To summarize: Social Media, by itself, is not a problem. People, by themselves, are not a problem either. But when you have billions of, ahem, "less gifted" people sucking at the teat of putrid misinformation, well... THAT is the problem right there.

            • But when you have billions of, ahem, "less gifted" people sucking at the teat of putrid misinformation, well... THAT is the problem right there.

              And assuming you know better than those "less gifted" people is the good intention that paves the road to hell. It's fundamentally antithetical to freedom to tell people what they're allowed to think, even if your intentions are noble.

              • You confuse objective facts with misinformation.
                You also confuse "I know more" with "I know better".
                Furthermore, the concept of "freedom" has been torn, mangled, abused, twisted, shred, fed to pigs, their excretion reprocessed and fed to pigs again, until there's nothing recognizable left.
                Sure, people are free to think whatever the fuck they want, as long as it's not materialized as illegal activities, meaning they are free to think whatever their mind poops, but they are NOT allowed to do whatever they thi

                • by HBI ( 10338492 )

                  Seeing the thread, the issue is internet mass media, full stop. We didn't know the end result when we started, but it's painfully obvious now.

                  There were means of control when we talked of newspapers, and the government actively controlled broadcast media (until cable/satellite systems were able to sidestep those regulations). I wasn't always a fan of those controls, but at least they existed and were applied reasonably evenhandedly. Letting cable and satellite systems out of the regulation was an error.

            • FYI https://www.fbpurity.com/ [fbpurity.com] added to your Chrome extensions will remove everything from Facebook on a desktop computer that you have not subscribed to explicitly.

          • Oh, bullocks. The internet has never suffered a shortage of idiots and assholes, going at least all the way back to Usenet. Whatever came before Usenet was probably also infested with idiots and assholes as well, but that would have been before my time. All "social media" does is give the idiots and assholes a louder voice. It doesn't create them.

            • by taustin ( 171655 )

              Mass media manipulating public opinion goes back to the moment mass media was invented.

                "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!"

              This is just the old guard fighting to maintain control over the manipulation, and the young tech-bro punks trying to take it away.

              Nothing new about that.

        • Re:Obligatory... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by taustin ( 171655 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @04:07PM (#64425484) Homepage Journal

          Indeed. This isn't about social media manipulating public opinion. All media manipulates public opinion.

          This is a fight about who gets to control the manipulation.

          And nothing else.

          • by ffkom ( 3519199 )
            And the fight about who gets to control the manipulation started even before printed media existed. For thousands of years priests spread made up stories and fake news to manipulate people into doing their bidding. They still do that today, reaching even villages without electricity and no newspapers on sale.
        • Services such as Facebook amplify those problem behaviors and then feed off of them.

      • Not Slashdot. It was in Slashdot that I leaned things like the use cases of Solaris, the real reason why there was not a Windows 9, and why so many Google products last less than three years. If Slashdot ends some value will be lost.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      So what happens when the next big social media app (from perhaps India) this time becomes popular? Do you repeat the same process?

      • India is not a foreign enemy.

      • Yeah, pretty much. That's the intent. Thou India has enough IP and privacy legal framework alignment with the US that the US will probably trust them until they do something bad... like exporting to an Export Controlled entity while promising they are not after they got warned from violating before.

    • A shutdown would cause a political stir in the US because it's a popular app.

      But this shut-down threat may be a ploy to scare USA regulators etc. If the algorithms were really that unique, they'd patent them to protect them, and then agree to license them to the split-off as part of the settlement as long as the split-off doesn't use or sell them for other apps.

      If they are relying on trade-secrecy instead of patents to protect their ideas, they are probably already swiped via mole employees, and/or deemed o

    • Re: Obligatory... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Unpopular Opinions ( 6836218 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @02:38PM (#64425130)

      Just your freedom of speech. Clearly nothing of importance.

    • "And nothing of value was lost"?

      ...if the allgenations are true the Chinese government might disagree.

    • "And nothing of value was lost"?

      Yeah, it's easy to enjoy the schadenfreude of seeing something you didn't use get the banhammer. Sooner or later they'll come for something you do enjoy, and you know how the "first they came for..." parable ends.

      • How many services do you use that exfiltrate user data to the PRC and/or assist the PRC with psyops campaigns?

  • Losing money anyway (Score:4, Interesting)

    by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @01:17PM (#64424848) Homepage
    According to TFS, the company is losing money, but they're still fighting to hold onto it and would rather shut it down than sell it. This suggests that profit was never the main goal of its owners, and that propaganda or other intelligence gathering has always been its purpose.
    • by Holi ( 250190 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @01:25PM (#64424878)

      According to the summary, the APP is a money loser. No where does it say Bytedance loses money. The article adds "TikTok accounts for a small share of ByteDance's total revenues".

      Lots of companies have loss-leaders to drive more profitable business without it being "propaganda".

      • If I wrote that Bytedance was losing money, I miswrote. My intended meaning was that TickToc was unprofitable.
      • And what other Bytedance-owned business profits from TikTok acting as a lose-leader in the United States?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      According to TFS, the company is losing money, but they're still fighting to hold onto it and would rather shut it down than sell it. This suggests that profit was never the main goal of its owners, and that propaganda or other intelligence gathering has always been its purpose.

      Maybe, but not necessarily. Twitter isn't profitable and never has been, and yet Elmo Muskowitz paid $44 Billion for it. Some people just like to throw money away on stupid shit.

    • by Njovich ( 553857 )

      This suggests that profit was never the main goal of its owners, and that propaganda or other intelligence gathering has always been its purpose.

      So by your logic Reddit must be a propaganda or intelligence channel because they never turned a profit yet?

      And same with Tesla before 2020? A propaganda outfit?

      Snap Inc too?

    • The suits at these negative income companies always make money. Who cares if it collapses in 5 years? You've made out like a bandit and other companies bend over backwards to hire you.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      No shit Sherlock.

      Same was true of the cesspools known as Twitter (pre-Musk) and Reddit. Of course those were bastions of "free speech" and American values (laugh).

      "Twitter has been operating at a massive loss for years, failing to book an annual profit since 2019 (Mauer, 2022). For eight out of the last ten years, the company has posted a loss. While losses are trending downwards, the company saw a net loss of a staggering $1.14 billion in 2020."

      Reddit hasn’t turned a profit in nearly 20 years, but i

    • You've never heard of an American company fighting to prop up a loss-leading product? Are all of those propaganda operations?

      People seriously overestimate the CCP. They do espionage, but they don't open up entire wings of capitalist companies for it. That's the CIA's move.

      • by TWX ( 665546 )

        Past discussion has stated that basically every large PRC Chinese company operates under a charter that allows the government to basically influence or take over the company at will.

        Stop thinking of China as a Communist state. Start thinking of it as one giant company where the Politburo is the board of directors and the Inner Party are shareholders, and all of the people in China vary somewhere between employee and liability.

    • Clearly you are unfamiliar with how tech startups work. You burn VC money until you have your customers hooked, THEN you put the squeeze on them to make money. Amazon took 9 years to turn a profit; Facebook 5 years; Netflix 6 years; YouTube 4 years; Uber 15 years. Twitter took 13 years to show a profit (and that was only for a single year in 2019) and now it's back to losing money again. Is that proof that Elon's X is a propaganda organization or just that he's a shit manager?

  • Isn't there research that FaceBook, Instagram, Tiktok negatively affect mental health, with teenage girls more susceptible to poor mental health because of social media?

    • There are quite a few studies, but most are fairly low quality. Think questionnaires, polls, and surveys, instead of empirical research measuring how much time people spend on social media correlated directly with mental health outcomes, like depression diagnoses or or other disorders. There are *very* few longitudinal studies that look at social media use over time. Most combine multiple existing studies trying to correlate unrelated research into screen time, social media use, and mental health outcomes.

    • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @02:58PM (#64425238) Homepage

      Isn't there research that FaceBook, Instagram, Tiktok negatively affect mental health, with teenage girls more susceptible to poor mental health because of social media?

      Here in the US, that's actually a good thing because we have for-profit healthcare. More mental health problems, more money for shrinks and anti-depressant drug manufacturers. The social media companies aren't the enemy, they're just driving the wheels of capitalism, baby!

  • no shit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday April 25, 2024 @01:37PM (#64424922) Homepage Journal

    "TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer shutting down its loss-making app rather than sell it"

    Yes, that's because its purpose is not profit, as it's a PsyOp. If the goal were profit, they would prefer to sell it. If they sell it, there is a risk that documents which prove its purpose will be transferred, and blow the whole operation even worse than being shut down.

    • They are a foreign intelligence agency masquerading as a business.

      Their only job is to get a footprint, physically or psychologically, that they can use as leverage and for intelligence.

    • Precisely. No matter, someone will start a competitor.

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Let me first say - I think you are correct

      but - I also don't think that is the only explanation. One other I think reasonably likely possibility is they are hedging. The law gives the POTUS authority to delay enforcement for some additional months if he finds there is 'progress' being made toward divestment.

      Progress - is one of those squishy bits of language that can mean anything anyone wants it to mean. TikTok knows they are popular with the Biden voter, and they know an election is coming. Even thought

    • Well... they're obviously going to say that as well, because they want all those TikTok fans to complain to their congresscritters and threaten to vote them out of office if they don't overturn this. Note that Trump hates China even more than Biden does, but he's not supporting the ban because he's seeing it as an opportunity to steal votes.

      In reality, they'll probably just spin off TikTok to some US based holding company that's still controlled by ByteDance. Like most Big Tech companies, I'm sure that they

      • Like most Big Tech companies, I'm sure that they have a plan ready to comply with the letter of the law without actually complying with the spirit of it.

        Sounds like Bytedance needs to ask Apple if they can borrow some of their lawyers.

    • "TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer shutting down its loss-making app rather than sell it"

      We would prefer that they shut it down too!

  • And nothing of value was lost.
  • by jpatters ( 883 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @02:13PM (#64425046)

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    The "TikTok ban" is, on its face, unconstitutional. There are two theories often stated about how TikTok is bad, one is that the algorithm is manipulated to push certain viewpoints. This goes right to the heart of the First Amendment, the government cannot put itself into the role of censoring the editorial decisions of a publisher. TikTok is a private entity here and a publisher (the press) and it has a clear constitutional right to publish whatever material it chooses so long as that material is not within a few narrowly defined categories such as defamation, csam, or calls to violence. If there was some material that ran afoul of that the remedy would be to ban that material, not to ban a particular publisher from existing.

    The second theory is that TikTok is collecting data on its users which is then relayed to the big scary Chinese Communist Party. Every large social media platform collects similar data, and most are perfectly happy to sell that data to any and all buyers who have the money, including the CCP. The remedy here is for Congress to pass data protection laws to protect users here. Just banning TikTok will not only infringe on the 1A rights of millions of TikTok users it will fail to actually do anything to protect the data generated by those users nor will it do anything to protect national security.

    • Just stop. They aren't banning any citizen's rights. Even TikTok is not american owned so no citizen there either. They are sanctioning a Foreign entity doing questionable business on US soil.
      • by celeb8 ( 682138 )
        Their business isn't "questionable" any more than lots of US based corps. They provide an app that has pretty flashing lights, they hoover up your data. Big whoop. "Plainly unconstitutional" is on the nose.
        • They are not banning US citizens from using TikTok, they are banning foreign entity TikTok from doing business in the US. That is a big distinction, and I feel sorry for anyone that can not see it.
          • Sorry to inform you that China owns a lot of stuff in the US.

            Here's a "top 10" style short list of a few things:

            https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/1... [cnbc.com]

            • It is common knowledge that many businesses in the US are not owned by US interests.

              I have already stopped buying Smithfield owned food products, it helps that the product had gone downhill; anyone that still thinks GE light bulbs or appliances is owned by US interests must be living under a rock, the quality for the light bulbs became junk brand equivalent years ago. Appliances seem ok. I have a Motorola phone knowing full well it is owned by Lenovo, but it is the only thing of these I would buy or supp
    • It's not about speech and no, the act is not specific to TikTok. It's specific to a certain type of service controlled by a foreign adversary. It does preload the bill with ByteDance and TikTok but only under the same terms as any future entity that falls under this even if they have no relation to ByteDance. There's no problem with that, because the Act gives the authority to determine future entities to the President and the President has to sign the bill into law anyway, so it works out the same.

      The o

      • It's under the Executive because it's a foreign relations & commerce topic and Legislation is purposely prevented from easily intervening in such decisions. It's not much different the Embargo list and its management.

        • The separation of powers makes sense. It's just that the power in the executive branch is too concentrated to one person and that power already gets abused.

    • Even if there were laws, they don't apply once the data leaves the US borders. Atleast with Meta/X/etc, the controlling company is within US jurisdiction. With TT, it's basically a shell company in the US.

      Audits have already found that the US entity isn't sufficiently independent of their CN mothership, even after remediations. And China doesn't have the same IP ideology as the EU and US. And on top, China does the same in reverse, all international companies must have local controlling partnerships. AN

    • Meta and other Silicon Valley companies can harvest that information from every soul across the world. China bans Meta from their country for these exact reasons, so China is bad mmkay. The US government is just protecting you, average American citizen, of being spied by someone else.

      Your First Amendment has become but a smoke screen.

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      This goes right to the heart of the First Amendment, the government cannot put itself into the role of censoring the editorial decisions of a publisher. TikTok is a private entity here and a publisher (the press) and it has a clear constitutional right to publish whatever material it chooses so long as that material is not within a few narrowly defined categories such as defamation, csam, or calls to violence.

      That remains to be seen. At heart is the question of the "algorithm" by which the publisher decides what to publish. This is similar to subliminal messaging in the sense that viewers aren't aware of the speech they've just heard (going from what you said, that the speech is editorial decision about what to show). But it's different in that with subliminal messaging an objective third party can see what the speech was, but with the "algorithm" no one can see what it was.

      Subliminal messaging was ruled NOT to

  • by jhuebel ( 44324 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @02:14PM (#64425050)

    "we don't want you to see our algorithms because it would expose our bias, give proof of the data mining we do of our users and put a spotlight on how TikTok amplifies addictive and dangerous content."

    • "we don't want you to see our algorithms because it would expose our bias, give proof of the data mining we do of our users and put a spotlight on how TikTok amplifies addictive and dangerous content."

      Or it's just that YouTube's and Meta's algorithms are absolute dogshit, and Bytedance doesn't want to get ripped off. I'm personally not a fan of short format videos, but from what I've seen on YouTube and Facebook, it's mostly just weird shit and rage bait. If that's the best they can do, it's no wonder TikTok is more popular.

  • Presumably the buyer would get the code to the app.

    There are probably so many surveillance, propaganda, and disinformation features embedded in the source that it can never be exposed to outsiders.
    There would be no way to safely modify the code in the time allowed to remove the unseemly functionality.

    This is more likely than the alternative, namely that ByteDance just doesn't care about the $6 Billion that the app would probably sell for.

  • They desperately needed a Tiktok ban, according to their head Greenblatt https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • In a country like the United States that has Free Speech, it is incredible that the U.S. government would try to take down an application with zero evidence of wrongdoing. Many people claim they are promoting 'propaganda' yet other apps and websites are extremely moderated as well. Why should TikTok not have the right to moderate their own content as they see fit in a country with Free Speech? Apparently the government wants to play the parent for its adult citizens and tell you what you can view. The other
    • The people at TikTok and ByteDance are probably all pretty great people and having success and doing good work. But you can look at our own Patriot Act and secret warrants that companies are forbidden to speak about. Whatever might have happened in China is likely classified, but there was suddenly a push to ban TikTok. In the US, you could just decide to shut down the company so that there's nothing to comply with. In China, it is probably not so easy.

      I really doubt this is about propaganda alone.

    • Like it or not, this is about the future of our children, the future minds of your children, and they apparently use TikTok a lot.

      Why pick on TikTok and not someone else? You have to start somewhere, and this is it.
      • Like it or not, this is about the future of our children, the future minds of your children, and they apparently use TikTok a lot.

        Then pass a law dragging unfit parents off to jail if they corrupt their children by buying them a smart device and connecting it to unfiltered internet access. Stop with the shit that affects adults because some parents are unable to raise their rug rats properly.

        Oh right, the idea that parents should actually have to put in effort to raise healthy, well-adjusted children would be politically unpopular.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      In a country like the United States that has Free Speech, it is incredible that the U.S. government would try to take down an application with zero evidence of wrongdoing.

      There is evidence. Legislators did not just make up stuff. The majority of evidence is classified, though.

      Many people claim they are promoting 'propaganda' yet other apps and websites are extremely moderated as well. Why should TikTok not have the right to moderate their own content as they see fit in a country with Free Speech?

      Because TikTok is ByteDance is a Chinese tech company, and many (if not most) Chinese tech companies have Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) offices inside them. No kidding, 60 Minutes filmed one.

      Apparently the government wants to play the parent for its adult citizens and tell you what you can view. The other argument is that TIkTok is spying, but this is a complete conspiracy theory.

      No, it isn't a conspiracy theory. China employs surveillance tech throughout its own territory. They are the very definition of a surveillance state.

      No, they aren't listening to your microphone without your permission, they aren't tracking you, and they aren't hacking your networks. This is a simple case of those in congress being too old to understand the world.

      Really? I refer you back to China's own internal surveil

  • Tik Tok sprung out of nowhere and killed Vine and whatever, and grew at an insane rate. Such doesn't happen in a dictatorship without funny business behind it. I don't know if it involves secret spyware, but just letting the oligarchs have a finger in the company's skyrocketing value is more than a sufficient reason to Rochambeau them.

  • by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @03:00PM (#64425250)
    Either way, China loses. But by denying millions of Americans their addiction to the platform, they're going to create a lot more misery for the politicians that put this into motion. In my life, I can't remember the U.S. government banning something more popular than TikTok. I can't wait to watch videos of the fallout on YouTube.
  • ...that China has abandoned capitalism. The "owners" could at least collect money for the company with a sale. Funny that China should be so upset that the US is doing to China what China did to Jack Ma.

  • now do meta (Score:4, Insightful)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @03:06PM (#64425286)

    Please do Meta next.

  • Because if they sell it we'll see what was behind the curtain. Better to burn it than to reveal the wizard.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday April 25, 2024 @04:23PM (#64425514)
    in an effort to get the people who make a living off tik toks to lobby congress. Which is silly. If they were going to do this they should've done it months ago.

    They also did something *really* dumb. If you've got the app installed they sent a noticed to call your congress critter about the "ban". Which a lot of people did. Which sounds great, but if you're trying to convince a Congressman that your app can't influence American politics that's probably not the best way to do it...

    None of this matters since as others have pointed out they can just buy all our data from x.com and Facebook (mostly Facebook, does anyone really still use x.com?) and use that for election interference.
  • This is just ByteDance posturing. TikTok's valuation is more than 50% of ByteDance's valuation according to the estimates I've seen. And they don't actually have to sell the algorithm, TikTok's value is its brand and userbase more than its algorithm. There's no reason that the algorithm needs to be included in the sale and ByteDance knows that. Think about all the articles you've seen about how Google Search is terrible now, but everyone keeps using it and Google keeps making tons of money on it. These

  • If people are really that addicted to TikTok having it banned from appstores won't do shit, and potentially make things worse. People will just side load the app either from official or unofficial sources. Without having to go though the app stores bytedance is free to insert all kinds of data collection/malware into it, and unofficial sources could also insert their own malware into it. This is going to be fun.
  • There are SO many US companies they can buy data from, like Google, ISPs, Facebook, on and on. The internet is awash with data for sale, on every person's internet activity, and by extension, every person's life. If they want data, they will still be able to buy it easily enough.

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