This will be truth social again with a pre-existing user base and better algorithms. People will drop off, but they will probably boil the frog slowly to keep people around.
Comment on Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
So, Trump effectively nationalized TikTok, valued at $300b. He sells it to friendly oligarchs for $15b. So far, this is basically the post-USSR playbook, and how Roman Abravmovich, Alisher Usmanov, Vladimir Lisin, etc. got so rich.
But it might piss off his oligarch buddies if he drives all the users off TikTok making what seemed like a steal into something worthless instead.
normalexit@lemmy.world 1 week ago
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
In ex-USSR that happened as something destructive, but in USA honestly it’s normal, using institutional pressure to help friendly businesses. Trump is unusual only in how grotesque he is in his position, but history saw Talleyrand.
And US sanctioned Japan just because some of its businesses couldn’t compete, which didn’t kill Japanese car industry, but hurt Japanese computer industry, and sent Japan into recession from which it didn’t quite recover.
About driving users off - that doesn’t really happen unless you intentionally break everything. VKontakte be the experiment showing this, except TG was later made based on VK makers’ experience with social stuff, and was very successful, and is now basically the most convenient messaging\social platform. When something FOSS manages to reproduce the experience of TG, then FOSS messaging and social systems stand a chance. So - some of the life moved from VK to TG, but it’s more of VK’s experience stagnating and being too complex and overloading, not of people fleeing it.
bigfondue@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I think that just like Elon with Twitter, the value is not in revenue but controlling the narrative.
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
That only works if people use it.
For some reason, people have stuck with Twitter. But, the users of TikTok are not the same as the users of Twitter, so who knows, maybe they won’t stick with it.