All right folks, while it’s been interesting to see members here try to make heads and tails of the recent Tiktok developments immediately following another one of the community's bits against “soft power,” some interpretations have become rather ridiculous.
No, the Tiktok ban isn't about AI, or Israel, or the election. The goal of exterminating Tiktok has been a thing since Trump, who tried to sell it to the Republican-supporting CEO of Oracle as a last feather in his cap before the election. That was 4 years ago, before the subsequent GPT AI mania in the public consciousness, and the campaign has been ongoing since 2020. Neither will the tactic of having a Singaporean public face "CEO" and being domiciled in Singapore going to fool anyone on the platform’s true origins. Some here are confusing the useful external rhetoric with the real material context that should be implicitly understood.
What the Tiktok blackmail really amounts to is a test by the US of whether China is willing to submit to a precedent of being treated the same way its subordinates like France has been. The inevitably craven French government pretended aloofness and allowed it to happen while French national Alstom executives like Frédéric Pierucci were imprisoned and tortured. Thus, what’s really at stake in the theft of Tiktok is the precedent it will set of allowing the US (and every other adversarial government, for that matter) to steal Chinese technological assets with impunity by broad daylight in front of China itself. As such, the saving grace for Tiktok isn’t going to be the "power" of the American Gen Z “vote", or the same Trump who did it first, or Bytedance’s comprador aspirant CEO, or the "fair-mindedness" of the US courts. The only thing that will stop this expropriation attempt is China itself, under its technological export restriction law promulgated specifically as a reaction to the Trump era forced sale attempt, which bans the sale of sensitive algorithms like Tiktok’s without Chinese regulatory approval.
With this in mind, as has always been the case ever since Trump-Oracle's 2020 theft attempt 4 years ago, it would be better for China to allow its outright ban in the US (and whichever subsequent bandwagon countries that follow the US' lead) than allow a long lasting working precedent to be set that legitimates future expropriation of Chinese assets, which in this case would also directly flaunt China’s 2020 export restriction law. The banning of US Tiktok is secondary to the threat of the expropriation precedent.
Yet another thing that should be mentioned is that Tiktok really does unironically pose a genuine “threat” to the US state apparatus. All the media noise following the Twitter Files obfuscated the official confirmation it gave that every single US social media platform has active communication channels to US intelligence/military/state personnel, connected by working relationships via email. They reveal the latter sent regular directives on which US propaganda accounts/content to artificially boost and on which accounts whose content disrupts US narratives to “algorithmically” suppress visibility, censor and ban. While Tiktok Global has already been couped internally by US personnel including ex-NSA officials, the official link to its parent company makes the recreation of a similar communication channel with Tiktok Global vulnerable of exposure to Bytedance, at least “psychologically” from the US OpSec perspective.
Through this, Tiktok is the only major social media platform in the entire English speaking world not entirely beholden to US state manipulation. This makes the short form app, with no exaggeration, a genuine challenge to the complete US hegemonic monopoly over social media and its ability to deplatform opposition and dissident voices not just in the West but in every country on the planet which lacks indigenously operated social media platforms (which is to say nearly every country with the exception of China itself).
These are the real reasons why Tiktok is once again being subjected to this latest expropriation attempt and why the US has been actively trying to steal Tiktok continuously for the past 4 years. Its reasons for doing so have perennial motive which are irrespective of whatever outlying current excuse some may believe as the "driving rationales." With bipartisan and unanimous agreement towards its theft as recent events show, the US is evidently clear eyed on its true intentions towards Tiktok and some members here should reciprocate a sober clearheadedness in kind towards recognizing what is really at stake in the eyes of the US state.
No, the Tiktok ban isn't about AI, or Israel, or the election. The goal of exterminating Tiktok has been a thing since Trump, who tried to sell it to the Republican-supporting CEO of Oracle as a last feather in his cap before the election. That was 4 years ago, before the subsequent GPT AI mania in the public consciousness, and the campaign has been ongoing since 2020. Neither will the tactic of having a Singaporean public face "CEO" and being domiciled in Singapore going to fool anyone on the platform’s true origins. Some here are confusing the useful external rhetoric with the real material context that should be implicitly understood.
What the Tiktok blackmail really amounts to is a test by the US of whether China is willing to submit to a precedent of being treated the same way its subordinates like France has been. The inevitably craven French government pretended aloofness and allowed it to happen while French national Alstom executives like Frédéric Pierucci were imprisoned and tortured. Thus, what’s really at stake in the theft of Tiktok is the precedent it will set of allowing the US (and every other adversarial government, for that matter) to steal Chinese technological assets with impunity by broad daylight in front of China itself. As such, the saving grace for Tiktok isn’t going to be the "power" of the American Gen Z “vote", or the same Trump who did it first, or Bytedance’s comprador aspirant CEO, or the "fair-mindedness" of the US courts. The only thing that will stop this expropriation attempt is China itself, under its technological export restriction law promulgated specifically as a reaction to the Trump era forced sale attempt, which bans the sale of sensitive algorithms like Tiktok’s without Chinese regulatory approval.
With this in mind, as has always been the case ever since Trump-Oracle's 2020 theft attempt 4 years ago, it would be better for China to allow its outright ban in the US (and whichever subsequent bandwagon countries that follow the US' lead) than allow a long lasting working precedent to be set that legitimates future expropriation of Chinese assets, which in this case would also directly flaunt China’s 2020 export restriction law. The banning of US Tiktok is secondary to the threat of the expropriation precedent.
Yet another thing that should be mentioned is that Tiktok really does unironically pose a genuine “threat” to the US state apparatus. All the media noise following the Twitter Files obfuscated the official confirmation it gave that every single US social media platform has active communication channels to US intelligence/military/state personnel, connected by working relationships via email. They reveal the latter sent regular directives on which US propaganda accounts/content to artificially boost and on which accounts whose content disrupts US narratives to “algorithmically” suppress visibility, censor and ban. While Tiktok Global has already been couped internally by US personnel including ex-NSA officials, the official link to its parent company makes the recreation of a similar communication channel with Tiktok Global vulnerable of exposure to Bytedance, at least “psychologically” from the US OpSec perspective.
Through this, Tiktok is the only major social media platform in the entire English speaking world not entirely beholden to US state manipulation. This makes the short form app, with no exaggeration, a genuine challenge to the complete US hegemonic monopoly over social media and its ability to deplatform opposition and dissident voices not just in the West but in every country on the planet which lacks indigenously operated social media platforms (which is to say nearly every country with the exception of China itself).
These are the real reasons why Tiktok is once again being subjected to this latest expropriation attempt and why the US has been actively trying to steal Tiktok continuously for the past 4 years. Its reasons for doing so have perennial motive which are irrespective of whatever outlying current excuse some may believe as the "driving rationales." With bipartisan and unanimous agreement towards its theft as recent events show, the US is evidently clear eyed on its true intentions towards Tiktok and some members here should reciprocate a sober clearheadedness in kind towards recognizing what is really at stake in the eyes of the US state.
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