5% of customers driving 25% of revenue is a market you want to invest in.
Amazon wasn’t profitable for how many years? It’s the exact same play. Take a loss to create something artificially desirable, strangle the competition and lock up your walled garden, then crank the prices.
I’ve talked with merchants TikTok Shop recruited, TikTok was paying them a ton to sell there, eating their processing fees, their shipping costs, and paying for massive discounts to customers so they could juice their metrics.
They’re starting to crank up their fees this spring and summer.
Same with advertising, advertisers want to go to TikTok, but I’m sure most of the actual spend is happening outside the app on influencers. TikTok wants that pie too.
Taking a loss means nothing in this context
firadin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You’re assuming its a profit-focused endeavor rather than a propaganda arm of the Chinese government.
kirklennon@kbin.social 6 months ago
I think it's a privately-owned, profit-focused endeavor that is nevertheless beholden to the Chinese government and which the government wants to take as much advantage of as possible. Deep down, I'm certain that their sole goal is to make as much money for themselves as they possibly can. If they also need to exfiltrate some data and send it to the CCP, that's just a necessary business expense.
cybersin@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Bro, Facebook facilitated a genocide, and this is who we want to buy TikTok? What action was taken against fb?
amnesty.org/…/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-…
“US coRpOrAtiOn goOd!”
firadin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Not US corporation good, just US corporation = US controlled. This isn’t a morality play, it’s a national security play.
Buttons@programming.dev 6 months ago
If TikTok’s purpose is to spread Chinese propaganda, can’t they just find a US Citizen that can run the website for them?
“Yeah, it’s my personal website where I exercise my 1st Amendment rights, also it has 100 million daily users and I happen to agree with China on a lot of things.” If a US Citizen were to say this, there would be nothing illegal about it I think?
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
We are talking about the same country right? The US committed the fucking Tuskegee experiments, MK ultra, and more recently Gitmo as a whole. If some dumbfuck wants to be a Chinese puppet I wouldnt put it past the feds to off em, shame they commited suicide by shooting themself in the back of the head twelve times with a shotgun.
Buttons@programming.dev 6 months ago
Okay, but I’m more interested in intra-legal reasons this couldn’t be done.
firadin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well China is refusing to divest, i.e. sell it to a US owner so clearly that’s not an option for them. If it was about the money they would have.