I’m not sure why China is seemingly going along with this. I don’t think we’ve heard confirmation from China’s side so hopefully this is just Trump prematurely celebrating, but it seems like a really bad deal for basically no gain.
“China doesn’t care about brown people”
I’ve gotten pretty doomerist about China recently, from not sanctioning “israel”, even when the UN declared it a genocide. This TikTok sale potentially removing a significant pipeline to leftwing thought, and although it’s brand new, the reception toward the K visas are facing a lot of criticisms.
I know someone might make the argument that the sale was pretty much required or else they’d lose service in America, etc., etc., but they definitely had leverage here and it feels like they rolled over without any push back.
@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net do you have any remarks on this?
It does sound pretty moralist to me. From what I’ve read so far, china first and foremost has a responsibility to their own people. They generally act as voice of reason in the world but that is not their main concern. If selling tiktok, which is also owned privately to a large portion afaik, helps them domestically and keeps the US and other nato hounds off their back for more time, that is what I would do as well. Also xiaohongshu has made significant progress in the west and will probably get even more people on once the sale is through.
I read about k visas but I didnt read much criticism of it, while I also think western criticism of communist states is rarely valid or founded in reality to begin with. I think they’re trying to gain talent and keep a flood of refugees from “1st world” countries from happening. I think I’m also excluded from that one iirc. I also think a large portion of the western citizens are in fact petit bourgoisie, which is the most reactionary class and who also complain the loudest. For that reason, it is important to understand how being a fugitive actually works. People who come from the global south to germany will walk days and nights, get put into concentration camps, drown in the ocean, make it here through sheer dumb luck, get harassed to learn the language, are not being allowed to work and more harassed because they are not working. Then they die when german citizens burn down their refugee camps or kill them on the street.
I think it is important for us to view the material conditions and apply correct dialectical thought. China is not forced to help anyone outside its own borders and it is arming the enemies of israel afaik. that they’re not also taking a loud stance might just be their strategic way of not drawing more attention to themselves.
The US is going to turn TikTok into another consent-manufacturing machine and that’s dangerous for China.
They could have just let it get banned. This would raise the contradictions within the US while also giving the US what it wanted i.e. no more TikTok counterculture.
Even if I accept that communists shouldn’t care about anyone outside their national borders, this isn’t even strategically sound.
The US is going to turn TikTok into another consent-manufacturing machine and that’s dangerous for China.
That will only apply to US based data and not the global version. Check this analysis from marketwatch newsmedia:
It’s true that ByteDance will no longer oversee daily content recommendations. Oracle will, easing the U.S. government’s most immediate security concerns. But China will retain residual control over TikTok’s algorithms. It has the freedom to set the scope of the license, determine the frequency of updates and decide whether the U.S. version can keep pace with the global one. Far from diminishing China’s influence, the deal risks entrenching it.
With this agreement, the fear of Chinese access to Americans’ data or direct manipulation of algorithms may fade. But it will be replaced by a subtler and more enduring risk: technological dependence on China, which retains a chokehold on TikTok’s powerful recommendation engine. The Trump administration has simply traded one vulnerability for another.
Manufacturing consent within the US is still worse than just letting TikTok get banned, and I don’t see any benefits for letting the US have another propaganda outlet to propagandize its people.
Why wouldn’t a ban be better?
Manufacturing consent within the US is still worse than just letting TikTok get banned, and I don’t see any benefits for letting the US have another propaganda outlet to propagandize its people.
What if Tiktok getting banned will hurt other Tiktok users outside of the USA? In other words, what if Tiktok’s refusal to negotiate, which will lead to a ban, will open the scenario of the US pressuring their vassals to also silence Tiktok?
Just to put this in perspective, TikTok has 1.84 billion monthly active users (MAU) worldwide. The United States has the largest TikTok audience, with over 150 million users aprox. 8.15% are users in the United States, which is what ByteDance, owner of TikTok, sold as “TikTok US.”
China not only won what the article that I linked mentioned but also won by showing to all countries that China is willing to respect a country’s rules with their user’s data, contrary to what the US usually does. Also, China retains 1.69 billion users, plus 20% of the revenue generated by 150 million US users. All of this while releasing pressure on other non Usonian tiktok users.
I guess I could see the US following a TikTok ban with pressuring it’s sphere of influence to also ban it to “stop Chinese influence.”
But I could also see this as straining US influence within its own sphere because of how unpopular such a ban would be, and expose faultines like the Chinese EV trade war is doing. I guess they didn’t want to risk it, which is in line with China’s generally slow-and-steady conservative approach to politics.
Gotta use rednote.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
