TikTok goes dark in the US
788 comments
·January 19, 2025daemoens
amatecha
I wonder how much ByteDance got from the incoming administration to pull that stunt. Super shady. "We voluntarily shut down our service in your country (er, I mean, we HAD TO, for real!) but don't worry, a true hero is soon arriving to save the day!"
elfbargpt
There are much bigger factors at play than a few billion dollars
gitaarik
You mean more money?
Because in the end it's always about money.
Well about power really, but money is the main means to get that.
bryanrasmussen
probably not for the guy who gets the few billion dollars.
amatecha
Word, I imagine there are all kinds of shenanigans at play, I'm just not spending that much effort thinking about it. We'll never know the complete story on any of this stuff. Maybe in tens of years, if ever.
pjc50
Other way round: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/jeff-yass-billionaire...
Yass has paid in tens of millions of dollars, he's going to call that in to get an unban.
I really don't know which way to bet on this though. The Trump presidency is going to be consistently unpredictable.
amatecha
Yeah I was thinking that too! Plus the "look how we made you look like the hero" aspect. Shady stuff all around.
elfbargpt
I have a feeling the ban is likely the result of "special interest" groups as opposed to a "classified briefing"
bjourne
"major major major generational problem … We have a TikTok problem, we have a Gen-Z problem." https://www.liberationnews.org/israels-pinkwashing-task-forc...
dekelpilli
Worth noting: > In a phone call leaked by the Tehran Times
jjcon
Somehow people like you always find a way to blame the Jews eyeroll - can't believe HN allows drivel like this
mikae1
The new president is populist. Once the rage of the TikTokrs is overwhelming, he's going to find a way to reinstate it.
chvid
A special interest group called Meta.
logicchains
Special interest groups that spend a huge amount of money to unseat representatives who go against their interests: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/16/cong...
lordofgibbons
It's obvious the app is being banned because for once we had unbiased news about Israel/Palestine and the ongoing genocide.
A media outlet not easy to censor is unacceptable to the Israeli lobby, and therefore unacceptable to our politicians.
null_deref
It baffles me that people can seem to comprehend that only the United States government has interests in its media outlets, and the authoritarian second to the US in the global stage don’t. 1. TikTok in the westernized form is banned in China. 2. When some people tried to move to rednote (the in the open Chinese app), they were getting banned in the first few hours for being gay and other ideas that came with them, so it’s very entirely plausible that also TikTok is heavily regulated from the officials of a foreign actor.
hmry
For those who don't know, Mitt Romney said this.
"Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."
gymbeaux
This reminds me of the Al Jazeera America (“AJAM”) news channel. They weren’t banned per sé, but it’s obvious they were doomed from the start. An Arab news network operating in the United States… if you think TikTok had a target painted on its back for being Chinese-owned… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_America
FranzFerdiNaN
The process to ban it was started years earlier.
brazzy
"unbiased" as in: maximally biased to serve Chinese interests.
a_wild_dandan
People will downvote you for revealing this, but it's the truth. I saw it on TikTok, after all.
bilekas
This is bizarre.. Maybe I'm wrong but is a president even allowed just unilaterally decide to revoke a law ?
Maybe the US should just create some privacy protections instead ?
TOMDM
It was explicitly written in this law specifically that the president can unilaterally decide that an affected platform has done enough to no longer qualify for the ban.
helsinkiandrew
> Maybe I'm wrong but is a president even allowed just unilaterally decide to revoke a law ?
No, but they can direct the federal government to deprioritize enforcement.
jbombadil
My understanding is that the law doesn’t ban TikTok. The law gives the president the power to ban TikTok. So the president can elect not to use said power.
yobid20
The law quite clearly states bytedance aka tiktok so yea tiktok is 100% banned and the penalty is massive fines that would essentially bankrupt them.
yobid20
No, he can't. Congress would have to revoke it. But it has bipartison support. So its just more of the same charade BS that he rants on about. Its all nonsense from him. It will be worse this time around bc he is not all there (even moreso than 2016). The next 4 yrs are going to be quite comical. He can't even control his bowels and he has to wear diapers to stop leaking.
TOMDM
I'm no fan of trump, but the law explicitly states that the president can exempt a platform.
> The Act exempts a foreign adversary controlled applica- tion from the prohibitions if the application undergoes a “qualified divestiture.” §2(c)(1). A “qualified divestiture” is one that the President determines will result in the appli- cation “no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.” §2(g)(6)(A).
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chvid
Biden could have cut a deal with TikTok instead of this. That would have left the US with a least one major social media not in the pocket of Trump.
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sirisaysgpt
It's just China/TikTok's Hail Mary. They want to make Trump look bad. Not sure if they realize that most of the ardent supporters of TikTok/migrater to Little Red Note are young female users who incidentally hate Trump anyways. And also ironic since a lot of those users signed up for Little Red Note got banned instantly for posting DEI content such as LGBTQ or trans.
Also, very happy to see all the China/Russia supporters on this thread crying.
rayval
I was on RedNote just now. I saw some gay content that had been there yesterday as well, and has not been removed.
BTW, the RedNote userbase in China is 70% female, similar to Pinterest in the US. That may be why there's an affinity with a portion of the Tiktok userbase. The RedNote users are not into politics (at least were not). They cats, cooking, fashion, interior decorating, travel, sports.
sirisaysgpt
One American user, who identified themselves as “non-binary” on RedNote, was censored after publishing a post on Tuesday asking if the platform welcomed gay people. The post was removed within hours, the user told CNN [0]
The next day, they uploaded a new post saying they will quit the platform over the decision but was soon on the receiving end of homophobic comments, with some users accusing them of cultural imposition.
A Chinese user suggested that he try covering his nipples, as Chinese social media platforms generally impose restrictions on displaying them when it is perceived as sexually suggestive.
A few RedNote users also noted that posts about the Japanese anime My Hero Academia, which faced censorship in China since 2018 due to controversial references to Japan’s wartime history, have since been removed from the platform.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/16/tech/tiktok-refugees-rednote-...
TypingOutBugs
> The RedNote users are not into politics
I wonder why? Post about Taiwan or 89 or Winnie the Pooh and find out :)
suraci
for what I Know, gay content is ok, gay flags are not ok
sekai
Okay now try these:
-"Taiwan is a country"
-"Free Tibet"
-"Covid came from China"
-"Uyghur concentration camps"
-"Tiananmen square massacre"
-"Mao starved 45 million Chinese"
suraci
why it's about Russia? are Russians a part of this too?
simion314
>why it's about Russia? are Russians a part of this too? reply
Yes, Russian bot farms work hard on TikTok. Algorithms and bot farms have no right for "free speech".
talldatethrow
The message being displayed to users is very pro Trump right in the message.
And I assume you mean woke* content not DEI.
null
jandrewrogers
A point I think most people don’t understand is that the government interest in TikTok has little to do with exploiting user data per se, a lot of other companies do that. The issue is that TikTok is somewhat unique in being aggressively weaponized in currently very active “grey zone” conflicts.
This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone conflict is, what it looks like, or why it matters. Geopolitic strategies are increasingly executed as grey zone warfare, and some hybrid warfare, because the costs and risks of traditional overt warfare have become unacceptably high.
jmkni
You mention “grey zone conflicts” then opine that people don’t know what that is…then don’t actually explain what it is!
Vegenoid
This is the very top of the "Description" section of the Wikipedia page for "Grey-zone (international relations)"[0]:
> Use of the term grey-zone is widespread in national security circles, but there is no universal agreement on the definition of grey-zone, or even whether it is a useful term, with views about the term ranging from "faddish" or "vague", to "useful" or "brilliant"
It goes on to say:
> Grey zone warfare generally means a middle, unclear space that exists between direct conflict and peace in international relations.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-zone_(international_relat...
null
IAmNotACellist
"Grey zone conflict" sounds a lot like our powers are upset they don't have the level of control over information that the adversary has. They want to be the ones to censor, suppress, and promote, rather than another country. The goal isn't more open access to information.
wolletd
You make it sound like that's generally a negative thing, implying that the information being promoted by other countries is made equal and has some implicit right to be spread. But it's not, it's geopolitic information warfare.
alwa
“More open access to information” is not the adversary’s goal, either. Is that goal served by preserving the adversary’s control over the information environment?
red_admiral
I think it's more the other way round, that they don't want others to have the same powers they do?
If you control the "last mile" infrastructure, you have a pretty good idea what's going on. If you control the mobile network, you can track everyone, and flash their baseband processor if you like.
(see also: concerns about Huawei equipment in our internet infrastructure)
The documents that Snowden released confirmed that this kind of thing was going on. To be honest, I don't think that really surprised anyone in the security community.
We just don't want China to have the same power to monitor our citizens as we have ourselves.
paweladamczuk
> and flash their baseband processor if you like
Could you please give some source on that info?
surfaceofthesun
In the US we allow significantly more spying on foreigners than US citizens. That’s not as controversial as domestic spying.
Look at the backlash against the US government trying to clamp down on Covid misinformation with a national emergency declaration [1]. There’s exactly zero reason to expect the CCP has an incentive to behave differently, especially when there’s effectively no way for companies to push back in China.
And no that doesn’t excuse the nonsense some US administrations get up to. Like undermining the effectiveness of the Chinese covid vaccine [2].
There is already evidence of pressure being applied to ByteDance by the CCP for data on Hong Kong citizens [3].
So it would be silly to think that: 1) data for different TikTok users is more or less difficult for the CCP to access based on their specific locations (technically or practically) And 2) the CCP has more respect for foreigners than Western governments do.
———
1 - https://hms.harvard.edu/news/whats-stake-us-supreme-court-ca...
2 - https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...
3 - https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-china-bytedance-user-data-...
deepsun
Whether they want or not, they cannot. The democratic system, even deficient as one in US, still does its job and works against blatant information suppression.
BriggyDwiggs42
Huh?
raverbashing
You are not wrong per se
> This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone conflict is, what it looks like, or why it matters
Looks like you're just confirming what OP said
Might as well look up the definition of "5th column"
null
int_
They can’t manufacture consent anymore regarding false flag wars that only benefit large war profiteering corporations.
wilg
the problem this law solves is that in tiktok's case the "they" who has the power to manufacture consent is the PRC
theshrike79
They don't need to, people share and watch the content voluntarily because it has novel value.
"Why wasn't I told this before?" Is a common sentiment in those videos.
atsjie
These arguments become so vague to me that it just feels like an excuse for governments to do whatever they want.
Calling it "Grey zone conflict" feels like the "Deep state" shenanigans... It's primarily marketing to achieve your goal.
We've seen the invasion of Iraq; that was all based on lies. We got ISIS as a result... "National security circles" look for evidence so it fits their narrative. Like watching FoxNews. It's a very narrowminded funnel of carefully picked pieces of evidence. They are not truth seekers that aim to provide a holistic view of the situation. No, they are scared aged men who love to control the narrative and see danger in everything in the hope to get more funding for their next projects.
Btw; banning TikTok is a good thing, but for other reasons entirely.
varsketiz
This. I suggest to read Unrestricted Warfare to understand more on how TikTok (or FB, X, Instagram and such) can be used as tools in modern conflict.
nikanj
TikTok is somewhat unique in presenting a real, non-us-based competitor to FB/Instagram. A bit of lobbying to block your competitor is a deft move on Mark’s part
Dalewyn
>The issue is that TikTok is somewhat unique in being aggressively weaponized in currently very active “grey zone” conflicts.
That has been happening since time immemorial.
What is actually the issue is that for the first time ever in the post-WW2 Pax Americana era, media is being weaponized by a powerful non-American state (China).
America does through Facebook, Mysterious Twitter X, Reddit, CNN, Fox News, PBS, et al. what China does through TikTok. If anything, other countries should also seriously consider banning foreign media and realize insofar as future geopolitics that Pax Americana is ending.
superjan
[delayed]
red_admiral
Didn't the USSR have a pretty good "foreign relations" propaganda team?
sirisaysgpt
It's been pretty entertaining to see all the China (and Russia) supporters crying on this thread. It's been a horrible for year for China after all, they needed some good news, but got none.
Dalewyn
I'm not a "China supporter" so much as I am simply stating reality for what it is.
America banned TikTok because it's not something America can control, that really is all there is to it. It's even stated right there in the law: Sell TikTok to America and they can do business.
iamnotsure
Is gray a hair color or colour?
firefoxd
This morning I felt the urge to download TikTok for the first time. I did, but I didn't bother creating an account.
There is a passage in the book Life of Pi, where Pi's family is gathered and ready to leave India for Canada. And his mother does something out of the ordinary:
> The day before our departure she pointed at a cigarette wallah and earnestly asked, "Should we get a pack or two?"
> Father replied, "They have tobacco in Canada. And why do you want to buy cigarettes? We don't smoke."
> Yes, they have tobacco in Canada-but do they have Gold Flake cigarettes? Do they have Arun ice cream? Are the bicycles Heroes? Are the televisions Onidas? Are the cars Ambassadors? Are the bookshops Higginbothams'? Such, I suspect, were the questions that swirled in Mother's mind as she contemplated buying cigarettes.
Do I use TikTok? No, I've always advocated against it. Will I use it if it is reinstated? Probably not. But I downloaded it anyway the same way Mrs Gita Patel wanted to buy cigarettes. It wasn’t about need or use. It was about the loss.
I would stand behind a tiktok ban if it was for the right reasons. But this ban is only because it failed to conform to manufactured consent.
sirisaysgpt
There is a statement from India’s information technology ministry, after 20 Indian soldiers died during border skirmish with China. When India banned TikTok in 2020 [0]
> Chinese mobile apps were stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data.
> The compilation of such data, and its mining and profiling by elements hostile to India is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures
[0] https://apnews.com/article/bd02ecd62ff9da6b1301868f0308e297
potamic
If they were really concerned about privacy, they would strengthen privacy laws. Adopt a GDPR like framework with opt-in consent and force platforms to implement a GrapheneOS like model with mock permissions and scoped consent. Banning apps is just a veiled attempt to appease other interests.
pixelatedindex
India is also an authoritarian government, is that something to celebrate? Also it is hilarious that they complain about TikTok but when you live in India, you realize that half their mobile phones themselves are from Chinese manufacturers. Some of them have Indian manufacturing units but it doesn’t take much scrutiny to realize that this is all political theater.
rsanek
huge false equivalency. true India is maybe not a model image of a democracy but they are way more free than China. take a look at the freedom house reports for more details.
FeistySkink
This is whataboutism.
qingcharles
> Do I use TikTok? No, I've always advocated against it.
This, to me, is a weird stance. On what grounds did you advocate against it?
I just had to create a new account tonight after the ban[0] to keep using it. When you first start TikTok you might be presented with a wave of seemingly crap, bizarre or boring videos, but after several minutes of liking and watching the good stuff the algorithm very quickly starts serving you some excellent content.
There is some really, really great, really smart content on TikTok. I have always advocated for TikTok on those grounds.
[0] my accounts are all on USA servers and you can't log into them even through a VPN
x3n0ph3n3
Not OP, but the users of it I know my person seem hypermobilized by what I consider brainrot ideologies amd generally seem to have highly destabilized psychologies.
ThrowawayTestr
>On what grounds did you advocate against it?
It's owned by the Chinese government and I don't trust the Chinese government.
reedf1
Make no mistake - it conforms to manufactured consent.
imgabe
The only difference is the manufacturer. But this is an important difference.
xandrius
If you're on iPhone that might make sense but on Android there is no need, lots of ways to get access to it after you moved to Canada, if you ever want to pick up smoking.
whoitwas
I would like to understand your position. China doesn't allow US apps. If Chinese apps are allowed, then China has a big advantage over USA.
Do you understand what kind of information can be derived from 150 million smart phones?
lmz
Is this supposed to be China only or should the rest of the world also be suspicious and ban e.g. Meta services especially since they don't have any competing service that is popular in the US?
whoitwas
Non allied nations should absolutely ban US apps. Additionally, all government devices should have strict security features. It would be wise to also protect certain places from all electronic monitoring.
darkwater
Oh but we are allies! The USA will never ever use the information gathered on allies for their own profit!
red_admiral
I presume meta is banned in China.
sekai
> Meta services especially since they don't have any competing service that is popular in the US
Meta won't tinker with the algorithm to push propaganda. TikTok will.
necovek
One is a "bastion of democracy", and another is the "center of human rights violation".
Would you not expect the rules to be different?
If it's only about reciprocity and global hegemony, well then...
unknownsky
Are you saying the United States is a bastion of democracy? It's not even classified as a full democracy. The list of full democracies are Canada, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, and Mauritius.
United States is classified as a flawed democracy. Partly because sweeping decisions like this one are made by Supreme Court Justices who nobody voted for and who hold their position for life.
Or maybe that's what you meant and you were being sarcastic with the quotation marks around "bastion of democracy"?
Fnoord
Said 'bastion of democracy' is a flawd democracy [1] who voted in a president who allegedly (facepalm) initiated a coup and got away with it. Also, a convicted criminal.
You could say it is a bastion of liberty but I'm from Europe and women here have reasonable abortion and sexuality rights.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Inde...
AirMax98
It's a shame that it's come to this. I feel that all arguments that TikTok is unhealthy or spyware and bad for our general public are valid, but the same arguments also apply to Instagram/Twitter/Whatever. Rather than have some sort of further regulation for what data any application can collect and present to Americans, we've just brought the hammer down on the millions of people that use this application for their livelihood. This serves only to enrich our American tech monopolies — companies which have proven to us that they have bad intentions towards our country's people.
Truly bleak.
wilg
None of those arguments are the salient one, which is that a geopolitical adversary has control over a major influence vector on US public opinion. They could simply have divested.
t0bia_s
"...there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought."
Geroge Orwell - Proposed preface to Animal Farm, first published in the Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
low_tech_love
So the alternative is to defend democracy by letting a foreign authoritarian entity take over your country in the name of (their) freedom?
I don’t get how can Americans be so insecure about themselves and have such fragile trust in what they can achieve as a country. This idea that foreign authoritarian regimes should be respected as much as their own people and system is just baffling.
sirisaysgpt
"And TikTok has special characteristics—a foreign adversary's ability to leverage its control over the platform to collect vast amounts of personal data from 170 million U. S. users—that justify this differential treatment. [S]peaker distinctions of this nature are not presumed in- valid under the First Amendment."
Unanimous decision to ban TikTok from a divided Supreme Court, 2025.
moshun
Amazing that we don’t hear this book quoted more often along with 1984, we seem to be living funhouse versions of both.
surfaceofthesun
The US government forcing spinoffs is a core tenant of antitrust enforcement. We’ve seen similar enforcement applied to other applications like Grindr [1].
The fundamental issue is ByteDance ownership. Forced divestiture due to legitimate concern for potential abuses is perfectly acceptable whether by a financial or national security rationale.
———
1 - https://www.axios.com/2024/04/27/biden-tiktok-sale-grindr
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wqaatwt
> destroying all independence of thought."
Not all of it. Just some of it. No need to see everything in such a black and white way.
Also Orwell was obviously not talking about major entities run by other countries. Do you think he would have opposed stopping newspapers directly run by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union from operating inside Britain?
selimthegrim
Wow I did not read this preface in high school when we did Animal Farm. Say it ain’t so Mr Kramer.
wilg
yes very brave and original to quote 1984 but actually its not totalitarian in any way. the means here are extremely reasonable and there's no free speech issue.
low_tech_love
This entire thread could be removed and only this comment should be kept. Unfortunately people have bought into this idea that all players in this game are following the rules. The US government is an extremely complex system and there is no way they would have reached a bipartisan conclusion on this if there wasn’t strong (confidential) evidence to support it.
ewild
to me this is the only important one. Not only can they subtely influence the entire us culture, if they were to get in trouble for it, then what? the US doesnt have any influence over them we would just ban them and at that point its too late. realistically it already is too late. a huge point imo aswell is we ARENT at war right now, but if we are at war the amount of information china can both push and obtain through tiktok would be large enough to change the tides of a war
blackeyeblitzar
China already wages asymmetrical warfare of all kinds - cyberattacks, IP theft, espionage, encroaching on other country’s territory, literally ramming ships in the South China Sea - subtly influencing other countries is a bridge they crossed a long time ago probably. It’s why Douyin has time limits and strict guidelines on content to make it more productive and educational, but TikTok doesn’t.
hypeatei
> Not only can they subtely influence the entire us culture
Not the entire U.S. population is on TikTok. Even if a significant percentage are, your argument is that they cannot think for themselves? It is widely known that TT is Chinese owned/controlled yet Americans still used it. Even a regulation requiring disclosure of that fact each time you open it would be fine. But an outright ban on the app itself? This is a huge "feel good" moment which will not improve any aspects of the social media environment in the U.S.
bjourne
> to me this is the only important one. Not only can they subtely influence the entire us culture, if they were to get in trouble for it, then what?
Suppose that is true. Then why are you ok with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or any other American oligarch wielding even more influence on US culture? When it comes down to it, it's just jingoism, isn't it? China man bad, America man good.
8note
its a horrible crutch that suggests america is already dead and gone.
america and americans should be able to view any media and still come to the best conclusions. banning media is a lack of trust in americans ability to formulate opinions. what the point in having media and democracy if you dont think people can make good decisions based on it?
Eextra953
I think this perfectly communicates why it feels so wrong that the government has banned tt. Its an implicit acknowledgement that our leaders feel that foreign influence will resonate with the public in a way that doesn't benefit the status quo.
fspeech
So many people focus only on TikTok instead of their fellow citizens' rights that are being trampled upon. Even NYT writers happily insinuate that all will be forgotten in no time. Cutting people's social links is not benign. An American may be happily watching Italian content, and when you cut her link it doesn't follow that the Italian creators will move their content to some other platform accessible to that American. Same for Americans with foreign followers. Americans may also have trouble reconnecting with American creators. It boggles the mind that these losses are given so little thought.
wqaatwt
> america and americans should be able to view any media and still come to the best conclusions
I’m rather confused how do you think that is somehow connected with:
> horrible crutch that suggests america is already dead and gone
If you believe that then surely you must also believe that it was never “alive” in the first place?
Americans certainly didn’t have unrestricted access to any type of media in ta past. In fact it was heavily centralized and controlled by a small number of entities. One might argue that the decentralization starting with cable television/etc. and then internet led us to where we are.
Everyone used to be watching the same handful of television channels (which were relatively “apolitical” anyway) and a small number of available newspapers. It’s rather obvious why it was much easier to reach societal consensus on most issues compared to these days…
127
Half of the people are sub-100 IQ. It's very naive to understate the stupidity of some people and their capability to do harm if mislead. Especially when it comes to weaponized social media content from a main geopolitical adversary. Letting Tiktok continue will do far more harm to democracy than banning it.
wilg
they're not banning any media or expression though so its a non-issue
blackoil
While I agree with your argument partially, I still find it ironic.
It assumes that we must prevent public from accessing some thoughts/propoganda as they may not be able to make right decision themselves. This is rhyming with 1930s Germany or other authoritative regimes since then.
encoderer
Like encouraging your wife to sleep in another man’s bed. After all, it should be fine! Do you want to prevent her from accessing some thoughts??? Let her make the right decision herself.
wilg
you can still access any thought you want due to our permissive free speech laws. you just cant run the app if you're china
enos_feedler
Even more ironic is that we have a government programming us with fears (just fears!) about what China _could_ do to justify some action they are taking. Literally running the playbook of entity they are trying to make us afraid of. Fucked up.
pizza
I’d rather have both data privacy protection through both laws and technological security AND a popular platform run by an adversary, than have neither privacy protections and only platforms that conceal their beneficiaries.
wilg
well that doesn't really represent the situation here so it doesn't really matter what you'd prefer of those two options
fspeech
Not sure why you say "simply". There is nothing simple about it: there are issues of forced technology transfers; there is the problem that TikTok is a global platform and revenue generation is across the border. These are just things that immediately come to mind and I am sure there are more.
wilg
selling a company is a solved problem
Vegenoid
Do people believe that the US government's control over Instagram/Twitter/whatever are similar to the level of control China's government has over TikTok?
I'm not that educated on the subject (I think most people who are making claims either way about this aren't), but all my priors indicate to me that China's government collects data from and controls content (to be shown only to the western populace) in TikTok much more than the US government with US social media companies.
I understand the comparison, but I think the magnitude of the problem is very likely to be much higher with TikTok.
blackoil
These bans are more to do with geopolitics and economic interest than security. e.g. Blanket ban on Huawei including accessing TSMC, Samsung fabs is more to protect Apple and Qualcomm.
plantwallshoe
Of all the bleak things in our world right now this one doesn’t even crack the top 500
fuzzfactor
It's an app.
Some money could possibly be made by some people legitimately.
The bleakest part is people who didn't recognize how extreme a gamble it is if that's what somebody wants to pin their entire livelihood on.
Whether they wrote the app or not.
The "house" just drew the winning hand, and all the gamblers lost everything they had on the table at once.
That can happen at any time, and almost always happens eventually, that's why they call it gambling.
It's not so bad if you don't bet everything.
llamaboy
You’re obviously not involved in the content creation world. My partners main income source is selling a product via Instagram. While she puts a lot of effort into building her brand on other platforms to diversify as she recognises the risk, once you have an established and profitable audience on one platform you’d be silly not to continue to put effort into growing that. Also what works on one platform is different to the others, it’s not a simple copy and paste. People generally are aware of this and try to diversify, but it’s not as easy as you might think.
Posts that get 5m+ views on one platform may only get 5000 on another.
disambiguation
You can always seek asylum in China if you want protection from the "evil American tech monopolies".
swasheck
as a parent who has attempted to navigate the complexities of social media and mental health and social norms and conformity, social media absolutely has an effect on how the emerging generations interact with their surrounding environments, and in my experience, all been negative. I understand this is colloquial, but the cloak wheel evidence of all of my peers additionally supports this. i’m sad, not that this has been banned and gone dark, but at the emotional and social uproar that this seems to have created.
swasheck
[flagged]
tsimionescu
Those arguments have nothing to do with why TikTok was banned. The banning is purely a geopolitical move. TikTok is the only major social network that is (hugely!) popular in Europe and North America that is not controlled by the USA - and even worse for US geopolitical ambitions, it has major ties with China.
This is not some conspiracy theory: this is 100% of the official reason that Congress voted on this. They fear that China has influence through TikTok into the US public, and could use this to sway public opinion [unsaid: just as the US does with Facebook or Twitter]. They also fear that China could surreptitiously spy on high-value targets through the TikTok app - which is why it was forbidden two years ago already from any device used in doing business with the US Government, including the business phones or BYOD phones of all federal employees and contractors.
Interestingly, part of the fear of influence ties back to Gaza. Here is a quote from Mitt Romney about this [0]:
> SENATOR ROMNEY: A small parenthetical point, which is some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts. So I’d note that’s of real interest, and the President will get the chance to make action in that regard.
This is exactly the sort of issue that the US fears: losing control of the public narrative, especially in the USA, but more broadly as well.
[0] https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-mccain-i...
yread
Interesting that a Romainian sounding username wouldn't mention the mess with Romanian presidential election where tiktok played a major role. The threat seems very real
jchook
Unreal. Land of Freedom bans Social Media app that runs on US servers, on its own terms, with censorship teams staffed by dozens of ex-US State officials[1].
Amazing that Congress will see bipartisan action on this issue before any of the other much more important issues.
It absolutely destroys criticisms of China banning Facebook, etc.
1. https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-ru...
_bin_
it's a trade war response to china's long history of walling non-chinese apps off from their billion-odd-user market while happily collecting users, data, and ad revenue from their own apps in other countries. if china removes all limitations on US tech platforms and ceases exploiting our open-by-default policy, we can talk lifting restrictions. until then, all chinese tech services should be banned.
basically china's entire tech industry was built on the back of creating an artificially constrained market where foreign competitors with superior products were not allowed to compete. that is, everything that wasn't built off outright theft of American tech. that could have been hundreds of billions of dollars of increased market cap and returns to the investing public, hundreds of billions that china effectively stole.
Stephen_0xFF
In a way you have to hand it to China for this master play. Globalization really complicates economies. China became the world’s factory because it produced products for a fraction of the cost, but it didn’t let the West in to provide services and products built by white collar workers into their economy. It copied and made sure that the services and products were produced by Chinese budding middle class workers. Now you can argue they’re on even footing with the West. I agree with you. They caught up and the handicap should be removed. They want their cake and to eat it too.
dehrmann
Somewhere I heard that there would have been much less drama around the TikTok ban if the US had framed it as tit-for-tat punishment for not allowing US social media platforms in China.
jchook
Going for a tit-for-tat with China on censorship is so hypocritical for the US it undermines its entire global persona.
imgabe
China also bans TikTok. That should tell you everything you need to know about whether they believe it is a positive influence.
sschueller
China also has a firewall, are we going to do that too? I guess that is one day to become communist, just copy them tit for tat...
imgabe
Let’s say you and I are adversaries. Or maybe just competitors. I invite you for a meal. But I won’t eat the meal myself. I only want you to eat it.
Do you think that’s going to be good for you?
sidcool
Wasn't the concern of data being siphoned off to China? Even India has banned it. Where does freedom come into picture here?
ascorbic
What do you mean "even India" has banned it? India is notorious for its censorship and is rated near the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index. Being in that company is absolutely not something the US should aspire to.
surfaceofthesun
I think the better framing is that ByteDance refused to comply with US regulations and spin off TikTok.
If the EU decided WhatsApp should be spun off from Meta (for any number of legitimate reasons) to continue operating there, we wouldn’t claim that the EU banned the app.
sillysaurusx
I wouldn’t mind my data being siphoned off to China. It’s not even clear that if China had all of our data then it would meaningfully change world events.
Freedom means freedom from censorship. I can’t think of an equivalent event that’s happened in my lifetime in the US. "India did it too" isn’t exactly a strong rallying cry.
That said, we’ll live. Hopefully our blind trust that there were security concerns ends up being worth something.
jchook
Arguably China has won the day with the massive migration to RedNote.
matsemann
I feel the same concerns for which US bans tiktok are valid for EU and fb/meta/x/twitter/google.
How do we know they're not siphoning our EU data to the US, or controlling what the algorithm shows us to influence politics?
jchook
Was it? What was the real concern? And can you prove it?
Technetium
Yes, it has been a security threat for years. It's a shame it took this long. In case you missed some of the myriad stories, here's just a few. Sure seems like the onus is on TikTok to prove they aren't being evil at this point, because all the evidence so far isn't implying anything good. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29592103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34109771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31920756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28199588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33280176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21076459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33302591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34098132
picafrost
It’s always uncomfortable when realpolitik clashes with the values we aspire to have.
What is freedom, anyway? Surely it can’t include allowing a foreign adversary access to a knob to twist on an important demographic of society. A foreign adversary who is actively compromising the network infrastructure of that society [1] but definitely wouldn’t touch infrastructure around an app owned by a Chinese company.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. One person's portal to a better world is a state's vehicle to shaping it in the state's interests.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/united-states-china-hacking-espio...
MichaelMoser123
that's a slippery slope. The Russian government is also justifying all of its censorship with foreign interference (this line of argument works with the Russian public, just to note), take care!
picafrost
I'm less certain that it's a slippery slope than it is a fine line. The government does not appear to have a problem with the speech occurring on TikTok. It is not trying to apply censorship or forcing the app to close down. It tried to force it to be sold away from its Chinese ownership. It tried to mitigate the possibility that a foreign adversary can use the app as a tool for its own interests. Had TikTok divested itself instead of shutting itself down the dancing would have continued on.
nvarsj
Indeed. It's the road to open government censorship. There is no grey area when it comes to freedom of speech.
dkjaudyeqooe
> What is freedom, anyway?
It's a question of freedom for whom and freedom from what.
vunderba
So I have a relatively large extended family covering a wide age range and we talk pretty frequently in a shared SMS group - most of them have noted the ban with a passing level of irritation but nobody's "freaking out" like if you lost access to a platform like Facebook, Twitter, or Discord that's more oriented around communication rather than consumption.
I understand that people spend a lot of time doomscrolling on it, but even with millions of daily users the optimistic side of me really wants to believe that it won't affect anyone's mental health in any measurable way.
andrewflnr
That's weird, my optimistic side is hoping it'll have a noticeable positive effect on people's mental health.
doom2
Maybe once they also ban American propaganda on American social media platforms.
bearjaws
I feel like I see so much negative, anti-America news I am not sure what propaganda you are even talking about. It's all over Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok. I would say Reels is suspiciously missing unless you subscribe to people directly.
tkel
Yeah for real. Boomer brains are so melted by anti-communist red scare china-bad propaganda that they can't see the problem is even worse for social media companies located in the US.
croes
Because the mindless videos they get on YouTube and such are better?
porridgeraisin
There won't really be a noticeable effect IMO. It was banned in India a few years ago, everyone pretty much instantly moved to reels/youtube shorts. I don't know how creators managed, but the consumption just moved to another app.
Nothing specific to TikTok either. PUBG mobile was also banned here around the same time, and people just moved to Call of Duty mobile.
aprilthird2021
Well, in India people are used to authoritarian government banning random online stuff. Or shutting the entire Internet down for days
This is the first largely used anything online the government has banned, and I'm personally still upset it even got this far. The internet was supposed to be free speech incarnate, and banning apps and websites for Americans on it, isn't something I honestly thought I'd ever see
heeen2
From the POV of the users it doesn't really make any difference whether the government bannd tiktok, vine went bankrupt, google decided wave was not worth it or any other reason a service becomes unavailable. They will cope by moving to a different service or changing their consumption habits
null
rvz
Perhaps this TikTok ban is a time to reflect around their addictions and cravings.
A new year's resolution to go cold turkey and a chance to change a cure their own addictions.
It is not the end of the world. Just the end of someone's supply of a brand of digital drug.
conradfr
At the end of The Truman Show when it goes dark the cops don't switch off the TV, they look for another channel.
croes
And the government won’t have a problem if the new digital drug is under their control.
FpUser
>"Perhaps this TikTok ban is a time to reflect around their addictions and cravings."
And tell "go fuck yourself" to FB, Instagram, X ... etc.
dmonitor
there are a decent number of people who make money and market their business on tiktok. those people are probably concerned about their future
tivert
> those people are probably concerned about their future
As they should be, because they stupidly made their lives dependent on a single platform that anyone with a brain could see was likely to run into trouble sooner rather than later.
The lesson for the is: don't put your eggs in one basket.
kelvinjps10
They only care about the userbase they will just start publishing to whichever platform users choose
starfezzy
Except for people who's income depends on it. And their families. And their friends.
seb1204
Most things sold there appear to be cheap, fast waste products. happy to have them gone and their unsustainable practices.
t-writescode
That certainly doesn’t reflect my experience with authors selling their books, musicians their music. Things I would never have found on my own.
Aloisius
People had years to prepare.
gdubs
I think a lot of people on here never spent much time on TikTok and it shows. It wasn't just for young people and it wasn't all brain rot.
There were vibrant communities, subcultures.
Real issues were aired there. Real people connected. From the early days of Covid it provided a window into a broader world.
dkjaudyeqooe
That's great, but the people there should realize it's a bad idea to put all your eggs in one social media platform basket.
gdubs
It's not like people aren't trying other platforms — but those platforms don't surface the same kind of content, don't provide the same reach, or are actively pushing their own agendas.
dkjaudyeqooe
Fair enough, but you should post your content elsewhere too, as a backup, and to reach more people perhaps.
While platforms dominate, instead of content dominating (see podcasts where this seems to be happening), you will always be a prisoner to what happens on the platform.
russli1993
would you say the same thing about Meta and Google? Clearly social media monopoly is not the issue. In fact, USA government want US dominance in global social media, digital world, and digital marketplaces.
fastball
I haven't seen anyone argue that TikTok provides zero value.
gundmc
Can you give some examples? I a skeptical that the format, designed for maximum retention and engagement, can be a positive.
gdubs
I mean, John Saves Energy is one that comes to mind. He shared tons of info about his solar power rig, interesting data, vibrant conversations.
Music accounts like Rare The Nanas who put me to sleep many nights with amazing VHS finds of obscure 90s music performances.
Tons of music theorists, weird quirky bands and musicians who built huge followings there, film makers, game devs, and on and on and on.
fastball
What prevents JohnSavesEnergy from posting content on any other platform?
FilipeMaia
The Communications Act of 1934 limits foreign ownership of many communication technologies such as TV. TikTok has easily more influence than most TV channels so it does not seem strange to limit its foreign ownership. If the purchase of US steel by a Japanese company threatens national security, surely the ownership of TikTok is also one.
throwawayqqq11
Can someone please explain to me, why it is illegal to publish biased media? Please relate your answer to US native broadcasters like Fox News.
The public discourse in the US appears very distorted. The rececently elected legislative heavily tampers with the executive/judicative and somehow this is stil democratic?
IMO the tiktok ban is only about media control, no morale or legality, just political power and somehow there is still free speech for all?
All this is so bizare to me. I dont expect reasonable answers.
TheFreim
> Can someone please explain to me, why it is illegal to publish biased media?
You have been misinformed, it is not illegal to publish biased media.
> The rececently elected legislative heavily tampers with the executive/judicative and somehow this is stil democratic.
What are you trying to say? The majority passes something, and the Supreme Court chose to allow it to continue.
> IMO the tiktok ban is only about media control, no morale or legality, just political power and somehow there is still free speech for all?
You're right that it's about media control, namely a foreign adversary being able to completely control media widely consumed in the United States. Framing a content-neutral conditional ban, which could've been avoided without any content changes, as being against "free speech" makes zero sense when the platform being banned is controlled by a foreign adversary that doesn't have free speech. The argument is that a foreign adversary shouldn't be allowed to censor and manipulate our media and farm our data.
atsjie
Always surprised me in the land of the "Free" they ban a whole lot more than in most other countries. Books, LGBT stuff, no objective media. It feels quite medieval.
geor9e
Apple and Google created individual APIs to serve up phone number, contacts, exact location, device model, time zone, clipboard data, photos, files, and cookies to 10 million different random app developers to harvest to their heart's delight. US government passes law against just one of them for using said APIs. Are they going to fix the root of the issue, or just play whack-a-mole forever?
Vegenoid
Not only have they created those APIs, they've actually created hardware devices to collect and store such valuable personal data. Banning certain APIs is just another layer of whack-a-mole - we need them to pull the weed out by its roots!
etchalon
Congress should ban operating systems is a hell of a take.
ripped_britches
Favorite comment today, thank you sir/maam
arunc
You know the answer.
jedimastert
I'm really curious and somewhat worried about what the economic effect of this is going to be. There are a number of legitimate small businesses that saw a lot of, if not all of, their business and customer base through TikTok. Business that just will not be able to make the move to somewhere else.
I personally know musicians, actors, and artists that got a lot of work through TikTok. People who actually create things, and people who just used the app to make ends meet who probably aren't going to make ends meet this month
paxys
There's nothing inherently special about TikTok. It just happens to be the hot social media platform right now. There were plenty before it and there will be plenty after it. There will be a short period of adjustment and eventually everyone will move on to something else. People aren't going to stop listening to music or buying things.
KaoruAoiShiho
Are you sure about this? I've heard many many times that tiktok is uniquely good at discovery for new businesses.
paxys
Because TikTok is where the hip young demographic is. If they all move to say Instagram Reels en masse then Instagram will be the platform that is uniquely good for discovery among that audience.
And let's not pretend that TikTok is filled to the brim with high quality products and small businesses. Yes there may be a couple of feel good stories about a local pizza place or small band that got their big break because of TikTok, but 99.9% of the advertising there is for the same junk/scam products that are on every other influencer-driven app.
dleeftink
It's the exact reason the platform economy has gotten such a bad rep over the years; drawing people in, taking a (disproportionate) slice of the pie, and providing no guarantees for a sustained income upon disruption.
ty6853
That would be a very good reason why a corporate influence dominated government would want to shut them down.
notatoad
yeah, tiktok really was (is?) something special because unlike other platforms, their algorithm really increased people's reach out beyond their own community.
youtube shorts and instagram reels seem like they do the same thing on the surface, but they're so much more focused on showing you content that they are certain you'll like, and from people in your network or people who you normally watch. they're a whole lot more focused on keeping people in their existing content silos.
johnneville
their algorithm was inherently special imo. as well as their ad service. instagram seems like the biggest available replacement but it is so offputting for me subjectively with it's worse algorithm and increased and ill-matches ad placement.
some of the fediverse alternatives seem appealing but have less content.
i'm sure something will replace it if the ban remains in place but at the moment there's nothing nearly as good for me
aprilthird2021
But that's not the point. There's nothing inherently special about Facebook either. But the disruption is expensive and many would argue unnecessary.
forgingahead
This is a typical HN "marketing is stupid" post. TikTok organic and paid are some of the best drivers of leads and sales for businesses, same like FB and Google are as well.
Handwaving TT away as "another social media platform" is like comparing Friendster or MySpace with the ad machine that FB has built. There are countless businesses that will be impacted by this.
AlexandrB
I would be happy if all social media was wiped out tomorrow. The eagerness of advertisers to throw money at these platforms frankly sickens me. So many of the internet's current ills originate in how social media platforms operate.
I don't give two shits how many leads these platforms drive, just like I don't care how many farmers the tobacco industry employs.
gemerald
You should never be fully reliant on a single corporate platform if you make a living selling goods or services.
0x6c6f6c
You can be fully aware of this and still have issues building up your platform elsewhere.
We utilize every platform equally. TikTok organically grew at least 5x the followership for our business, meanwhile Meta gouges us for advertising to be seen at all and we see worse results and interactions there.
The ban of TikTok will have resounding effects even if people are utilizing the alternatives. I've seen far too many people who haven't used TikTok and the alternatives for their business, or are not business owners at all, declare their opinions as facts when they have no actual experience in this space.
I'm not saying this explicitly includes you, I don't make presumptions about your experience in this space.
Salgat
That's because most of the users are there. Now they will go somewhere else, and you can utilize whatever becomes the next big platform.
genocidicbunny
Regardless, the parent is correct. If you're reliant on a single platform, for whatever reasons, you're vulnerable to being fucked over by that platform. Practically speaking, how is TT being banned different than being arbitrarily banned from TT?
globular-toast
Which will be impossible if people stop using cash.
bearjaws
Companies had 4 years, and more recently, 4 months of notice. Theres two other doom scrolling platforms to choose from.
I think people overestimate how much local businesses relied on it, sure a few were booming making "me too" content (looking at you pressure washing companies). But you will still find the goods and services you need.
And now you won't have dozens of bad temu ad's "OH I feel bad for whoever bought this vacuum yesterday because now its 57% off!!!"
waltbosz
My cousin worked at a place where he would stream for 8 hours a day on tiktok and sell trading card packs and other collectables. I guess it was a bit like home shopping network. But his streams were kinda goofy and playful. I didn't really understand who the customers were. I guess some people found him entertaining and liked what he was selling.
reaperducer
So he's going to get a job now?
jrflowers
“Entertainment isn’t a real job” is a cool and normal opinion to have, and it’s usually held by people that are a blast to be around
scarface_74
My friend who is bartender downstairs from my condo is a singer in a band. They are active on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
skue
This wasn’t a sudden thing. The law was passed 9 months ago.
enjo
They had plenty of time to figure this out.
voidfunc
Don't worry it will be reversed by the end of the week.
MangoCoffee
How? It's a law passed by Congress with support from both parties. Trump can delay the enforcement, but who knows what will happen after he is gone? Is there any guarantee that Apple, Google, or any companies providing services to TikTok won't face massive fines after Trump leaves?
The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1]
The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines.
[1] https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxbusiness.com/foxbusiness.c...