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Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Makes sense from a business point of view. Why sell to create a new competitor with the same technology and an impregnable market base in the USA?
Better to force US competition to start from scratch.
randao@lemmy.world 6 months ago
viking@infosec.pub 6 months ago
Not really, they would still be operating the same business in every other part of the world, except for the US. So you’d then have US Tiktok competing with World Tiktok. They can’t be forced to sell the global operations due to a mandate from some American court, no matter how much they think to be the world police.
randao@lemmy.world 6 months ago
[deleted]viking@infosec.pub 6 months ago
US tiktok won’t operate outside USA.
Says who?
OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 6 months ago
For money. Whoever buys it has to pay you for it. Shutting down just means leaving a gaping hole in American social media that some other company will fill and you’ll be in the same position but with less money.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Yeah I agree, there really is no incentive for a for-profit company to choose shutting down over selling. Unless they never cared about profit and had ulterior motives from the very beginning.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 months ago
YouTube/IG are hardly starting from scratch.
But they don’t have the international reach of TikTok.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
IG is owned by FaceBook which actually has about double the userbase of TikTok if you don’t count DouYin’s 700 Million.
Buttons@programming.dev 6 months ago
Why don’t they just sell TikTok to a US Citizen who happens to believe TikTok should remain the same.
TikTok would remain exactly the same, with the exact same algorithms, but it would then be the free speech of a US Citizen so everyone would be happy. Maybe TikTok couldn’t send the data directly to China anymore, but they could certainly sell personal data on the shadowy data markets, just like every other US owned tech company does.
In short, why can’t China simply find a US Citizen or two to do their bidding?
yildolw@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Why don’t they just sell TikTok to a US Citizen who happens to believe TikTok should remain the same?
They already did that. TikTok is incorporated in the Cayman Islands with headquarters in Los Angeles. The bill of attainder is post-that
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
This is part of Section H of H.R.815 that was signed into law:
(A) any of— (i) ByteDance, Ltd.; (ii) TikTok; (iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or (iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or (B) a covered company that— (i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and (ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of— (I) a public notice proposing such determination; and (II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture. (4) FOREIGN ADVERSARY COUNTRY.—The term “foreign adversary country” means a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code.
So, no, they don’t just get to change their name. They don’t get to change everything and still send data overseas to China. They have to cut ties with the CCP or else they cannot escape this.
Buttons@programming.dev 6 months ago
I see. You’re right about the text of the law. Thanks for taking the time to post that.
I would say it violates the 1st Amendment then. US Citizens is have a right to say what they want, which includes saying what China wants if that is what the person wants.
The courts will have to decide.
Serinus@lemmy.world 6 months ago
For the record, they’re not currently sending data to China. Though they’d probably only have to gently twist one or two arms and need about 12 hours to do so.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
The company openly stores the data in China. Ex-employee Yintao “Roger” Yu, who was head of Engineering for all of ByteDance’s US Operations in 2017-2018, claims that the CCP had full immediate access to all collected data.
lud@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Why don’t they just sell TikTok to a US Citizen who happens to believe TikTok should remain the same?
Who? What USA citizen is prepared to buy something for the privilege of fighting the USA government with would obviously get mad and probably block the sale if byte Dance TikTok is still involved.
I don’t really follow USA politics but didn’t this law pass by quite large margins? They could obviously ban toktik.
Buttons@programming.dev 6 months ago
They can’t actually ban TikTok by name, it’s unconstitutional to make laws targeted at individuals.
The current law actually says “no company can operate in the US with over 20% owned by China, Iran, N. Korea, or Russia”, or something like that.
There’s a lot of people in the US and at least of few of them would be willing to run TikTok the same way, same algorithms, same content, and sell the users data on shadowy data markets (which China can surely get their hands on), etc. I’m repeating myself now.
Again, my point is there are a lot of people in the US and surely some of them can form a company willing to do what China wants, and isn’t that their right by our laws and morals of free speech? I know if things get heated enough laws and morals will be ignored (see Japanese internment camps).
And my even broader point is that this move against TikTok has ulterior motives. We should have created regulations that apply to all companies instead of targeting TikTok specifically (which we effectively did, even if not technically).
InternetUser2012@midwest.social 6 months ago
Our House of Representatives and Senate are more than 20% owned by Russia.
lud@lemm.ee 6 months ago
If you help TikTok in that way you would absolutely get on the government’s hit list (literal or not).
It would probably be quite easy to just make a new law or revision that stops the theoretical loophole.
festus@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I mean the sale agreement could require the buyer to never expand outside the US.