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I am not saying the China shock was fake, or state surveillance is fine, or that they don’t exploit migrant workers, or that their currency manipulation and financial repression were/are good. I just think we should be skeptical that national security arguments are motivated by virtue, especially when “the good” is largely confined to what’s good for USA tech
This is not a left versus right thing. China being unchallenged in the world will spell a quality of life decrease for us in the West. They are not “the good guys.” You’re free to see both parties as ‘neutral’ in alignment, but you still don’t want to have to be the losing party when they come into conflict. My point is China is not going to be sharing any of what they gain with Americans, even the ones who cheer for them - it’ll in fact be coming at your expense.
The CPC having a direct feed into the brains of every Gen Z and younger American is trivially easy to exploit - and there is a 0% chance that they won’t do so next year when they will likely invade Taiwan. If China is in control of TikTok, they’ll boost a ton of propaganda, supposedly people “from Taiwan” who greet the PLA as liberators, explaining how Taiwan being independent is actually oppression, and how they’ve always considered themselves part of the PRC, only evil politicians were keeping them apart. And they’ll make sure to suppress all media that exposes the violence on the ground. Finally, they’ll boost content urging Americans to protest US involvement and to sabotage the military, such as by chaining themselves to ships, etc.
Ryan McBeth has made a ton of videos laying out how this will work, and he does a better job than I have of explaining this.
TikTok is a cyberweapon.
In Gen Z's eyes, America is bad for Americans. That's what happens when you build a low trust society. America spent decades trying to build up a strong rapport among citizens and they tore it down and sold them out in a single generation.
Maybe china will be worse. But the appeals to nationalism simply will not work among our youth. We abandoned them, they will see the village burned to feel its warmth. Already happened in 2024.
China's soft rule will not be as incompetent.
1. China overtakes the US -> US society directly decines and thats it. (Your scenario)
2. China overtakes the US -> It takes out the elites with everyone else (what Gen-Z likely wants to see)
3. US manages to hold on -> Elites continue their trajectory of snapping everything up leaving the crumbs for everyone else. (The best case scenario pro-US people can hope for right now)
4. US manages to hold on -> They somehow decide to reform and implement v2.0 of New Deal. (The dream of the bernie sanders wing ie. a pipedream at this point)
You are really showing your age with your attitude.
Put yourself in Gen-Z's shoes. What is realistic at this point? What can even millenials hope for?
The best case is that they end up being a transitional generation that helps their kids survive their childhood and grow into a decent adult life. The worse case is managed decline.
Either way Gen Y and Gen Z are done for. This amazing American system you defend has ruined these generations long term outlooks and Trump's bumbling has already written their final chapters.
Gen Z is simply unique as the "full immersion" generation. It's uniquely hard to ignore the youth unemployment for kids who are spending more than ever to be educated, or being hard locked out of minimum wage jobs our parents would scare us with because they lack a bachelor's degree.
The issue is that trust was intentionally sabotaged.
And what says has China on the advances of Americans geopolitical ambitions? I’m not saying they are the good guys obviously, but at this point as an European between China maybe invading Taiwan and the US openly threatening to take control of allied territory (Greenland) or on the verge of starting another war for oil control (Venezuela), I’m not sure what’s worst for "the west". And that’s not even talking about climate change, science, etc. Who is more aligned with a sustainable future for the world?
> TikTok is a cyberweapon
I’m far more concerned by the YouTube, Twitter/X and Facebook cyber weapons that have been radicalizing and destroying our societies for more than a decade. Just the other day a fake video about a coup in France trended on Facebook and not even our President could have it removed. Have you also see the plan of the US to weaken the EU by targeting countries to make them leave the EU? Again not saying China are good guys, but it’s time Americans freaking out about China have a hard look in the mirror.
Can't be taken seriously if you're going to elide that "detail".
Like this US one?
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...
America's incompetent leadership is self-inflicted. Biden's 2020 campaign strategy was pro status quo ante - which I find similar to your appeal to "normalcy". Unfortunately (for future American global primacy), this message did not resonate with voters in 2024. I suspect "getting back to normal" is not enough for Gens Y & Z, who have already lost a class war whose existence they may not be aware of.
The only way some millennials will own house is by inheriting them from boomers, and the rest of the housing stock will be mostly bought by corporate investors. Everyone else will rent until death, and provide reccuring income to make the graph go up.
Big Capital is not my friend and its not most peoples friend, even if some of us here were lucky enough to be useful to them for now.
My previous bosses would move to fire me or get me transferred out of their org if they found out I valued getting my employees paid more, over literally anything else that moved the bottom line.
> And when we vote we need to remember that things that look bad for us homeowners like allowing big development companies to come in and raze all of our houses and build townhomes and apartments for rent might be necessary to keep the bad situation from getting worse.
This has been explained for years. At best the reaction gotten from homeowners can be paraphrased to, “yea, I hope you keep the commons working, but I got my bag”
> Or, if we do nothing and let the status quo reign, our kids will suddenly find themselves renting everything they use for the rest of their lives.
There’s other options too after the ballot box stops working and your life is permanently worse under the status quo, but you are not allowed to discuss those options on Western social media sites
Sheltered Gen-Z Americans, who have never known a disordered society love to talk about revolution, but they are so ill prepared for something like that. It’s not even funny. To be clear, none of us in the “first world” are prepared for something like that.
From a European standpoint: The ideal outcome is a stalemate between China and the US, with us as the kingmaker.
We could basically do the same thing as Yugoslavia did during the Cold War and play both sides against one another, extracting concessions from both.
Y'all've got a lot of headwinds, and America should be helping you with them instead of posturing and pretending to be friends with our enemies.
America needs to get closer to Europe and India, democratic East Asia, Mexico, Vietnam ... not this bullshit we're doing right now.
I agree. But not many are one of the largest economies in the world and the world's most prolific regulator.
> America should be helping you with them instead of posturing and pretending to be friends with our enemies.
I also agree, but unfortunately the American electorate and its elites have proven deeply untrustworthy. I wish it wasn't so, but that's what happened.
With that in mind, the best outcome for us is to hope for American power to decrease relative to China to increase our own leverage.
I'm tired of this "China is exploiting Gen Z", the US is a propaganda machine and has been for decades. Now they are mad that China is taking their space.
The last war China was involved with was 1979 compared to America, today mind you, that is on the cusp of invading Venezuela because Rubio has a moronic axe to grind.
It's really hard to not see the facade for what it is: rich people are upset that their world order is collapsing.
Frankly who care? Give me universal medicare, universal childcare, and public higher education then maybe, just maybe, I might start to care about all this stuff that only seems to make people lives worse not better.
Sadly you have to start caring for things to get better first.
Why am I suppose to care that people in Africa are pushing for better worker rights and decolonialization? Because the executives as Nestle might make slightly lower money? That big tech can't extract more blood minerals? Boo hoo, it's not like this has ever benefited American citizens writ large.
Also the UN is worthless, if this is suppose to scare people you might lose your hat come election night in 2026.
And I’ll take recognizing a communist party over dropping napalm on em.
Its just another side, with its own motivation, these days backstabbing and insulting those few friends that stubbornly still linger around for historical reasons, changing opinions frequently. Unreliable as are its sophisticated warfare products. Morals what?
can you clarify if you’re talking about China or the US?
IMO the bigger problem is that national security is only part of the problem. An unknowable algorithm controlled by the Ellisons is not necessarily less dangerous than one controlled by China, the motivations are just different.
(I don’t use TikTok so I don’t know first hand!)
If you want proof, watch someone’s feed with them. Invariably they will start to apologize. Classic “he’s different when we’re alone” rationalization for an addictive substance
Is that unique to any one social media? Our internet browsing is pretty intimate. I dont even want my family seeing my moment to moment feed.
This is my experience as well. I don't use the app, so my only direct experience is watching with someone scrolling their feed.
Perhaps the algorithm has gotten better since, but I had no reason to want to use it after that.
If Insta and youtube shorts get enough traction, there's no reason creators won't simply post to each of them to maximize their reach. The legacy platforms are heavily courting/promoting short form video, why leave possible monetization on the table?
Hell, I'm too old for their demo, but I see TikTok videos posted to Reddit and even BlueSky.
They are both very similar obviously, but the social network on one isn't the same as the other.
A lot of the people in my age group (Millennials) decided that TikTok was where we were going to get off the "hot new social media platform" train.
The Zoomers and GenAlpha kids seemed to be the people really using it, but I'm just a crotchety old guy with a bald head and a gut and an office job at this point, so I don't know what the hip young people are up to with their Tok Clocks and their loud rock music.
I heard this argument about TV and videogames before
Have you every heard a heroin addict comparing heroin to TV?
Sports, dance, family, etc.
Everybody knows too many people for an anecdote to make videogames and heroin the same. It's like pointing out some school shooter played a violent video games; so did the people they shot. You need to disprove the null hypothesis; not show that there exists evidence.
For those that are downvoting this based on vibes, please feel free to get recent view counts that prove me wrong.
YouTube keeps pushing it harder and harder. On the AppleTV, search often returns 90% Shorts, with no way to filter them out.
TikTok is Chinese Youtube & YouTube is Western TikTok
Both are cancer.
Sure, you can find white paper previews on Tiktok.
Well yeah, it's existed longer. You can't compare one service like YouTube, a streaming platform for video vs TikTok which is a viral social platform.
> Can you find research seminars on TikTok? TikTok isn't nor the platform for such. This link has results.
I hate social media more than most people do, and I don't use tiktok and don't think anyone else should, but can we all please stop comparing a mobile phone app to using heroin? It's misinformed and dangerous to make rhetorical comparisons like that.
Everyone knows Facebook/Meta is actually the heroin. A product intentionally designed to steal your life and enrich its owners. Duh
Is this a satirical post? I'm really struggling to comprehend it coherently
Did you mean nicotine?
> Only people with no actual life experience with drugs or drug users would make such an asinine and overtly hyperbolic statement as that.
Ma'am withdrawing from tiktok cannot kill you. Consuming tiktok cannot kill you. Tiktok does not make you shit yourself
Also assuming your heroin isn't tainted it isn't toxic and you can have a normal life expectancy.
Can we all stop pretending it's a not an issue?
The US did a good job of taking those away, so it's hard to complain when others come in to fill that void.
China just wants us to buy cheap Chinese crap.
>Tiktok does not give you a 5 year life expectancy
12 year old life expectancy then?
> The lawsuit, filed in the US claims that Isaac Kenevan, 13, Archie Battersbee, 12, Julian "Jools" Sweeney, 14, and Maia Walsh, 13, died while attempting the so-called "blackout challenge". Four children died because of, compared to one, who injects?
Heroin invokes addiction, TikTok does that. Heroin can cause physical dependency, TikTok brews this. Heroin is highly addictive, isn't TikTok to the young viewer?
I still hold my point that TikTok can be distilled and viewed as a form of Digital Heroin. Evidence shows.
How else do you describe it's nature?
TikTok is in no way like heroin, stop using that false analogy
How is it not a form of digital heroin when the effects are digital?
Heroin destroys your mind, And one could argue without moderation any other thing can do too.
Because "digital heroin" is a nonsense phrase used as a thought-terminating cliché.
> when the side-effects are the same of?
Assuming that this is intended to be something like "when the side effects are the same as those of heroin?" then the premise is false; the effects (side or otherwise) of TikTok are not meaningfully similar to those of heroin.
some people feel like they are addicted to short form content but it’s really nothing like a drug addiction much less an addiction to something as devastating as heroin
Unfortunately, whether it's a deadly drug or a deadly disease, these casual references are unlikely to drop from public discourse anytime soon. And I personally would rather live in a world where insensitive or potentially-triggering language is gently discouraged, than one where the pendulum swings too far the other way towards censorship or radical left woke cancel culture. Words can be unintentionally callous without being "micro-aggressions". (And I say that as a liberal progressive.)
Thanks for posting in a personal and persuasive manner, instead of anger. Yours is the more effective approach anyway.
I'd hope to hold this community to a higher standard than "the public discourse".
2026 in a nutshell, yes. The Daily Watergate of American history.
They won't. The entire point of this charade is to remind Americans we can't expect any better than instagram or youtube.
Its not out of goodwill, but the objective of "don't be ad ridden slop maximizing shareholder gain" was a bar you didn't even need to step over
All other outcomes on the table, you have no input or direction on this company. And people seem to be justifying US interference on the basis that its influence warrants public direction.
Well then that same logic would justify it being controlled by the public, no?
A couple major differences here are:
* Not video
* Meant more for commmunity/interactivity
* Not individual algorithmic
So a site like this optimizes for most-user-upvoted content, to try to surface content that is found interesting by people who are presumably somewhat like you. That seems pretty different from a self-serving platform that optimizes for whatever keeps you from blinking.
This is another sign of the US' decline. The refusal to follow inconvenient laws.
Allowing the executive branch sway over the enforcement of laws that they're ostensibly beholden to prevents enforcement at all, which robs the citizens of the United States of the protection they've been afforded.
Yes. There is a series of executive orders (eg [1]) that literally say "To permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed, the Attorney General shall not take any action on behalf of the United States to enforce the Act ...". The "PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS ACT" only allows the US AG to sue for enforcement, so this essentially is completely waiving enforcement.
This is why congress often gives independent agencies or private actors the right to sue in an act - because the DOJ cannot be trusted to fairly enforce laws if there is even the slightest political or economic valence to them.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/savi...
That's dumb.
I mean..
what about ..the slightest political or economic valence to..
um..
the Attorney General?
or even worse..
what about ..the slightest political or economic valence.. to ..independent agencies or private actors.
That's, like, explicit corruption isn't it? We'll give this private actor or independent entity the exclusive right to be the defacto enforcer for whatever laws. (Laws they themselves probably asked, sorry "lobbied", for?)
If you can trust some ..independent.. entity, I'm sorry, that means you can make the cops independent in the same way and trust them to enforce that law. If it's impossible that the cops can be set up to be independent in a way that prevents corruption, then how is the ..independent.. entity set up that it prevents corruption?
I hadn't realized that was going on. That's insanity. Wow we're corrupt.
Basically, Congress did not do its job and ignored the very law they voted for.
Am I ignoring the TikTok law? No, because it's not my job to enforce it.
The executive branch is the one that ignores the law.
It feels like this is increasingly the case. Not sure what the solutions are.
Can cronyism become more blatant?
Now if the issue was Hunter Biden being on the board at all -- even if independent of any Joe Biden dealmaking -- then I'm very curious how the Republicans sounding alarms back then react to the Barron Trump TikTok board seat now.
We see something similar in Europe in that Musk burps out the EU must disband after they fined his company for breaking local laws. It's like a really stupid variant of corporatocracy dominating the USA right now; at the least in the past it was a bit more subtle. Now it is like barbarian posing as oligarchs are having crazy fits. I think 99.9% of their wealth must be confiscated and given to The People - too much wealth makes the mind weak and leads them to act as tyrannical parasites.
If not, the sale is illegal. Congress passed a law saying that TikTok was to be banned. Not "can be sold after a bunch of backroom deals by tech aristocracy that happens to be friends with an incredibly corrupt President", but banned. SCOTUS agreed that the law held up to scrutiny.
The bigger issue is that the Trump directed the AG not to enforce the law. So something is plainly illegal but is de-facto legal because of executive pronouncement. That is extremely worrying because one aspect of totalitarianism is that the dicta of the ruler has effect of law.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815/...
This is the way. I wonder if we'll ever see the day that consumers get a fighting chance.
It'll be Larry Ellison, a slaver nation, and a PE surveillance focused firm having consensual access to your data! And the US government!
we did it guys!
In China if the government makes a request for data the courts are not involved, the company has no ability to push back and they cannot disclose any info about government requests.
They can also voluntarily give it over, and as part of a contract for money
(TL/DR: It's shit all the way down).
> This was never about addressing privacy, propaganda, or national security. It was always about the U.S. stealing ownership of one of the most popular and successful short form video apps in history because companies like Facebook were too innovatively incompetent to dethrone them in the open market. Ultimately this bipartisan accomplishment not only makes everything worse, it demonstrates we’re absolutely no better than the countries we criticize.
I think when PAFACA passed and set up a ban of TikTok, it was in fact about privacy and propaganda and national security. It’s just that the Trump administration looks at every single situation as an opportunity for grift and corruption, and they abused the opportunity.
The deal does shift algorithmic control and moderation to US based entities. I am not sure what that means in reality. Maybe they can just say they’re in control but choose to use the existing system? Who knows. The terms of the deal look like they help with the original concerns on the face of it.
I disagree. I think was about making sure Americans see the "RIGHT" propaganda.
American companies just want to acquire all our money. China wants to convince us to withdraw from the rest of the world so they can take over everything they want.
People get tunnel-vision. Facebook is for "Facebook things", TikTok is for "TikTok things". Reels, stories, whatevers isn't "TikTok".
It's why Facebook bought Instagram. No matter if Facebook copied Instagram down to the pixel, it still wouldn't be Instagram. And it's why the branding has remained consistent.
Same thing with Google and YouTube.
It's why these acquisitions happen and why these companies become something else. Google to Alphabet, Facebook to Meta, etc.
This just forces the sale of TikTok to someone in the U.S.
> This was never about addressing ... national security
You have no idea what you are talking about.
It sounds like the author would have preferred that a different group of billionaires take over.
It's very optimistic to assume that China was beaten here.
Bytedance still owns the algorithm and 30% of the new company. This new wrapper firm is just being granted the license to serve as Bytedance's operations, essentially. All the stuff about it being 'trained on US content' and 'overseen' by Oracle is smoke and mirrors. This is really just the zombie of the deal that was done four years[1] ago and then quietly scrubbed.
This isn't significantly different than the way TikTok has been operating all along, the only difference is a few of the administration's cronies are able to get their heads into the feeding trough.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/19/trump-says-he-has-approved-t...
If your first reaction is “but that won’t work!” then you don’t really believe in a free speech based society, and all that’s left to do is argue over which group of shadowy billionaires should get to control everyone.
who are you intending to tell about these tiktok lies? how do you know if youve told the right people? what algorithm is going to pick up your corrections as equally viral as the lies were?
if youre actually going to do it, i think you need your own shadowy billionaire funding paying the various social media companies to pretend that your version of the truth is popular. maybe multiple shadowy billionaires.
While I believe in free speech, free speech isn't some panacea. Nor does it magically exist without protection from powerful interests. What good does speaking up do, if "algorithms" managing the majority of speech have big money riding on promoting irresponsible speech at the expense of sidelining responsible speech.
This isn't a neutral open marketplace of ideas, battling on merit. It is a pervasively manipulated market for profit, and those who will pay to tilt it.
The right way to deal with surveillance and dossier based manipulation by external actors, is not to pick on one actor, but to make surveillance and dossier based manipulation illegal for all actors.
Nobody buys a TV wanting their watching habits to end up impacting what ads they see in web views, and vice versa.
That kind of behind the scenes coordination of unpermissioned data, as leverage against the sources of the data, is deeply anti-libertarian. Anti-liberty in both right and left formulations. (The idea that "libertarian" means the rich have a pass to do anything they can achieve with money, underhanded or not, is a corruption of any concept of individual liberty.)
The enshittification of the world is being driven by this hostile business model. Via permissionless (or permissioned by dark pattern) coordinated privacy violations. And it isn't just foreign adversaries who are benefiting at societies cost.
The constant collecting, collating, and converging of data on anyone doing anything that pervades the private/public economy now is deeply parasitical.
Free speech, like every other right, only achieves its real value in a healthy environment. I.e. a healthy idea competitive environment. I believe in voting too. But similarly, voting only matters in a healthy competitive candidate environment.
Whichever is better for the majority of people. This the same answer for democracy
I don't know how we conclude that:
> The new U.S. operations of TikTok will have three “managing investors” that will collectively own 45 percent of the company: Oracle Corporation, Silver Lake, and MGX.
> the private equity firm Silver Lake (which has broad global investments in Chinese and Israeli hyper-surveillance)
> 30.1 percent will be “held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9 percent will be retained by ByteDance.”
Now we have oligarchs, plus a major surveillance investor group, plus the Chinese.
This doesn't seem to be a solution to anything except that "a deal was made", and any further attempts at cleaning up credible risks have so many players to deal with, they would be DOA.
"From Chips to Security, China Is Getting Much of What It Wants From the U.S." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/world/asia/nvidia-china-t...
Now, you could argue that the subsequent invasion of Iraq was counterproductive to that, but I don't see that argument having water.
1) eliminating a military threat to Saudi Arabia and Israel
2) placing hundreds of military outposts on Iran's doorstep
3) destabilizing Iran and Syria by empowering militant groups dormant under Saddam to re-arm and try to establish a Caliphate in Syria.
4) awarding trillions in no-bid contracts to Dick Cheney's Halliburton and a slew of arms manufacturers and private military contractors who could operate free of the burdensome rules of the Geneva Conventions. Halliburton received so much business that they moved their HQ to Dubai.
Yet you provide none.
https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/6416/afghanistans-opium-p...
But there has been a meme in China for ages that Trump is secretly a Chinese guy named “Chuan Jianguo” (Jianguo means “building the nation”) who was sent by China to destroy America from within.
Although answer is probably simplest - for himself and his ego.
I cant imagine the mental gymnastic any half decent republican must be going through daily to keep avoiding utter debiliating shame for voting him when doing the proverbial look in the mirror.
Why?
This whole notion where “half the country voted for this guy!” Is a tired and inaccurate trope.
Exactly which president in the past 100 years are you referring to? I can come up a list if you’re not sure who was elected before Clinton.
Which makes it a lot more than half the country.
You really believe that? If you don’t vote you’re not an active citizen?
I have no words.
Or maybe just the less of 2 evils. An intelligent asshat or non asshat that was an imbecile. It was time for a change.
There are so many things I don’t like about him but some of his policies such as immigration / border enforcement, natural resource utilization, federal workforce reduction, regulatory reduction and tariffs are absolutely legit imho and will take time to have an affect.
Why is he not in jail right now for the most obviously transparent bribery scheme in the history of US politics!?
Why is nobody screaming about this?
I like your implication that Trump is not an ass hat here instead of the biggest asshole ever elected to office
> There are so many things I don’t like about him but some of his policies such as immigration / border enforcement, natural resource utilization, federal workforce reduction, regulatory reduction and tariffs are absolutely legit imho and will take time to have an affect.
For most administrations yea, since they actually try to keep the government running and use a lighter touch, but since this guy took a sledgehammer to everything we’re already feeling the effects, unless you believe the inflation report that’s missing tons of data produced by people who replaced the leaders that gave him numbers he didn’t like previously
I do agree and more was just trying to moderate my comments.
That is called lying
“Look, I know he’s an utter piece of shit who is a known con artist and surrounds himself with sycophants and his policies are demonstrably failing to achieve anything that he claimed, but like, he’s cracking down on immigration and that seems worth unraveling democracy.”
It's contested and speculative, but a reasonable projection of Trump V Harris gives >50% to Trump in a finall runoff for majority.
>… waaay more than 50%…
You posted a lot of words to still not prove that claim
Makes you wonder what side the Times is really on here.
It's a garage fire-sale and China has just to sit there and wait.
Non-techies don't conflate Apple with Netflix. Why do techies consistently conflate the NYT with Newsnation?