TikTok parent company says it won't sell, despite possible U.S. ban

I feel like specifically targeting TikTok rather than more general protections for privacy and data collection is theatrics

But it's hard to listen to China bitch and moan about this when they arbitrarily ban US services on a regular basis for much more inane reasons

The big issue other than data collection is the platform’s censorship of topics the CCP doesn’t want discussed (Taiwan/Hong Kong independence, Uighur genocide, CCP corruption, widespread industrial espionage) and the amplification of topics seen as divisive/polarizing/destabilizing to western nations as part of the CCP’s propaganda policy.
- Which is another area where it makes no sense to single out TikTok since foreign countries can easily manipulate US media companies to do the same.

Vanguard and Blackrock and their ilk should sell off all their stakes too.

Fuck all these global elites running everything. Gotta take the power back.

Good. Go the fuck away.

FARA-unregistered foreign influence operations aren't a facet of "free speech" in the USA.

Fine. It isn't rocket science to create a clone app. Bet there are some already emerging.

Waiting for truth-tok to show up
Pretty much every single social platform has already tried to copy it (e.g. YouTube shorts, Facebook and Instagram reels, I don't remember what Snapchat calls theirs, etc). The difference is how well TikTok's algorithm works and the overall user experience, plus the established userbase. Tons of younger people hate Meta and their products, they view them as old people social media, so they've mostly failed to recapture the younger demographic at large (except maybe Snapchat, that for some reason has steadily kept a non-insignificant younger userbase).

That being said, I won't be surprised if a TikTok clone emerges that's run by some "American" company called LiteStance or something where ByteDance just so happens to be an angel investor.
- In b4 "new from X: Æ!"
- Yeah, you have to start with dancing teenage girls.
Can't be worse that the garbage YouTube shorts are. Why do I see the same videos over and over again.

Legitimate question: Can someone explain to me what would stop ByteDance from selling off the company to someone or some company that's just going to "sell" the data to the CCP and amplify their propaganda anyway? I'm sure it'll take all of 5 minutes for the Chinese to find someone willing to agree to those terms.

I imagine the benefit is that China will be on a level playing field if they have to influence an outside company vs just telling subordinates to accomplish an objective like creating dissent amongst a foreign population.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

TikTok is gearing up for a legal fight against a U.S. law that would force the social media platform to break ties with its China-based parent company, a move almost certainly backed by Chinese authorities as the bitter U.S.-China rivalry threatens the future of a wildly popular way for young people in America to connect online.

Beijing may not want the U.S. action against the popular short-form video platform to set a "bad precedent," said Alex Capri, senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore and research fellow at Hinrich Foundation.

In its first official response to the new law, parent company ByteDance delivered a statement Thursday on Toutiao — a Chinese news app it owns — stating it "doesn't have any plan to sell TikTok."

With 170 million American users, TikTok should "have more guts to fight to the very end and refuse to surrender," Hu, now a political commentator, said Wednesday on Chinese social media.

The law has followed a string of successes by Washington in curbing the influence of Chinese companies through bans, export controls and forced divestitures, drawing protests from Beijing that the U.S. is bent on suppressing China's rise through economic coercion.

But TikTok, created by a Chinese company only for the overseas market and evidence of the nation's tech powers on the global stage, is a high-profile case that Beijing does not want to lose.

The original article contains 692 words, the summary contains 231 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Good. They shouldn't put up with our culture war bullshit. Though I like the idea another commenter had: if TikTok and Blackrock and other parasites were all dealt with equally, I'd support it.