What Would Be Worse Than Death To TikTok? Elon Musk Buying It!
The latest on Sunday's planned free speech ban!
Anybody else sad about a potential TikTok ban? Just me? Love the platform, it brings back memories of having cable television and flipping channels for hours. I downloaded it to make sure the children were not showing too much front or back cleavage on there while they recorded themselves doing the floss-dance, and now I use it more than they do. I’ve discovered artists I never would have (Doechii!), learned to fix food I never would otherwise (cucumber salads!) and there’s good news content on there too (Under The Desk!)
Anyway, the TikTok ban from app stores is set to take effect Sunday, and UGH, Bloomberg has reported that no grosser of an oligarch than Elon Musk is wanting to buy it, which would be the only thing worse than it disappearing from app stores on Sunday. Just what the world needs, another platform forcing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and racist Pepes in front of your eyeballs!
Bloomberg’s report, based on “people familiar with the matter” seems kind of sus from the jump, though, starting with the first line, “Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok.”
First of all, the Chinese government doesn’t own TikTok, though a Chinese guy founded it, and was never incorporated there. It’s owned by ByteDance Ltd., which is headquartered in the Cayman Islands, and TikTok Inc. is headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore, with servers (where the algorithm happens) in Virginia. Sixty percent of ByteDance is owned by non-Chinese global institutional investors including Susquehanna International Group (majority shareholder Jeff Yass), the Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, KKR, BlackRock, and Tiger Global Management; 20 percent of the firm is owned by Beijing-based founder Zhang Yiming, and 20 percent is owned by employees.
Three of the company's five board members are Americans, and the other two are based in Hong Kong and Singapore. Content moderation happens in Ireland. User data is not stored in China. Founder Zhang Yiming is not a Chinese official, and even if he were, how would Chinese officials be able to do shit about shit or sell anything that they do not own? Bloomberg, you are sloppy.
TikTok has denied any talks of a sale to Musk. Furthermore, its US operations are worth about $50 billion, so would Elon even have that kind of liquidity to put up 12 percent of his net worth in cash, especially after reportedly promising to use his cash to primary any Republicans who vote against Pete Hegseth’s confirmation? Even for him, that’s kind of a lot.
And would board members ever approve such a sale, considering the guy anti-Rumplestiltskinned his $44 billion investment in Twitter to a value of $15 billion because advertisers and users have fled it like a hot turd? Sounds most likely that “people familiar with the matter” was Elon, after smoking a bone in his owl hoodie.
(ICYMI)
This whole very unprecedented ban is such entire bullshit, nothing more than Trump getting his way, which he openly admits. About 40 percent of people between 18-29 say they get their news from TikTok, and he fucking hated that so many people were talking shit about him on an app with 170 million users that he could not control. So Mike Johnson crammed the ban into the Republicans’ $95 billion foreign aid package. But then Jeff Yass invested in Trump’s shitty media platform, and flew down to Florida to kiss Trump’s ass, and the algorithm started being nice to Trump, and helped him win young voters, so then he liked it again.
As you know, I used TikTok very successfully in my campaign. I have a man named TikTok Jack. He was very effective, obviously, because I won youth by 30 percent. All Republicans lose youth. I don't know why. Maybe it's changing. And last time we were down 30 percent with youth. This time we're up 35 percent with youth. And I used TikTok, so I can't really, you know — I can't totally hate it. It was very effective.
PREVIOUSLY!
The ban was ALL about him opposing the expression of opinions and words, which is as un-First Amendment-y as it gets. Also notable, the end of TikTok will mean the end of income for millions of content creators and revenue for about 7 million small businesses on there, some of whom do quite well. TikTok drove $15 billion in revenue to small businesses in 2023 and contributed $24.2 billion to the US GDP.
The Bill was called “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” and singles out TikTok in particular, even though it is not controlled by a foreign adversary. It is not an app without sin, it must be said; the company has been investigated over its (American) employees tracking multiple journalists covering it, and in 2022 the company fired the chief internal auditor who led the team responsible for them. But there’s no evidence that the Chinese government ever wanted or got the spoils of that snoopery. Also TikTok detractors claim that the algorithm is a “black box,” but so is every social media platform’s feed. And TikTok’s seems more obvious than most: Linger on something longer, you see more of it, skip it and you see less. This is how I wound up with a feed that is mostly men styling their hair into pompadours, and rare Duran Duran performances.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Anyway, Trump ran to the Supreme Court and filed a law-free brief about how he alone can save TikTok, and the Supremes are still mulling it over.
Also Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey has introduced a bill, “Extend the TikTok Deadline Act,” which would give ByteDance another 270 days to sell the app, and now even Rand Paul is against its shutdown. The ban doesn’t need to be slowed down, it needs to be stopped, because banning shit is not who we are, and all of this sits on a throne of fibs!
Meanwhile, the number one download in the Apple Store is Xiaohongshu (Red Note), which is literally the Chinese TikTok. The icon looks like this.
And after about 12 hours of trying, I got my number verified on there! And it is delightful, in its own kind way. It’s sort of like being in actual China, but without having to sit on a plane for 12 hours or risk getting giardia from an ice cube. Much of it’s in Chinese, but there’s just enough English so you can get by. The Hongshu-ers seem puzzled by the influx, but friendly, reaching out to TikTok refugees with greetings and content everybody enjoys, such as cat pictures, stir-fry recipes, and Luigi Mangione rendered in cappuccino foam.
What a turn of events, a ban meant to drive Americans and Chinese people apart bringing them closer together than ever.
Will SCOTUS decide to halt the ban? Will Chinese TikTok take off? We shall see! If the ban passes the app will still exist on your phone, there just won’t be any software updates, and at some point it will break or become obsolete. Until then, get in those cucumber recipes and floss dances and pompadour tips while you still can.
[Bloomberg archive link/ CNN/ Forbes archive link/ Oxford Economics ]
I know they're calling it Red Note, but 小红书 is literally "Little Red Book." Mao's last joke from the grave?
"with servers (where the algorithm happens) in Virginia"
that's AWS us-east-1. They have servers there, sure. You cannot fucking tell me they're not multi region though. TikTok is AWS-based.
"User data is not stored in China."
Bull fucking shit.
https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/
I will bet you a gentleperson's bet of $1 to wonkette that they are replicating to the AWS China regions, at least one of them.