And they’re already kissing Trump’s ass
And now Trump gets to be the one who saved TikTok, despite starting the process.
It’s an own-goal for Biden - an unpopular law that starts being enforced the day before Trump gets to stop enforcing it.
No one is enforcing it, it’s a play by TikTok. TikTok did it voluntarily. The server is still there, my wife logged in and saw the notice.
It’s just theater.
No one is enforcing it, it’s a play by TikTok. TikTok did it voluntarily
Yup. In fact, Biden had specifically said he will not enforce the ban.
Which, incidentally…might be the same thing Trump does to “unban TikTok” once he takes office. Which is bizarre, on both sides. Like…that’s literally not legal for a president to do. They can’t legally just ignore an Act of Congress.
Not that the law matters in America anymore. The Supreme Court has pretty definitively seen to that.
enforcement is up to the ag, so yea. they could just ‘ignore’ the law.
the only thing the ‘president’ can do is extend the deadline by 90 days given evidence that the company is closing-in on a deal.
with scotus out of the way, ruling in favor of trump’s initial desires, and that which subsequently passed through congress; it is now up to congress to undo the legislation if they so choose.
enforcement is up to the ag, so yea. they could just ‘ignore’ the law.
In practice, there’s no real mechanism to force it (especially if Congress is unwilling to impeach & convict). But legally speaking, the Take Care clause of the constitution obligates the President (through his executive) to enforce all laws passed by Congress. Ignoring it would be unconstitutional.
When has trump ever cared about the constution?
You’re talking about the guy who wants to end birthright citizenship.
LOL WTF does he care about the constitution? He’s a fucking felon. And clearly no one in government cares about the constitution either.
Not sure that is true though. When I read the law it specifies that the President can choose to block ANY foreign owned social media site that they (as in the president) deems a national security threat. So Trump could in theory say ban RedNote tomorrow and it legally would have to be done. That said… he may be able to just say “bytedance is not considered a national security threat at this time” and that may be enough to let TikTok continue to be in the U.S.
I’d have to read it again to confirm
Edit: nah ByteDance got targeted hard, no dodging that.
DIVISION H-- PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS ACT
Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act
(Sec. 2) This division prohibits distributing, maintaining, updating, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok). However, the prohibition does not apply to a covered application that executes a qualified divestiture as determined by the President.
Under the division, a foreign adversary controlled application is an application directly or indirectly operated by (1) ByteDance, Ltd., TikTok, their subsidiaries, successors, related entities they control, or entities controlled by a foreign adversary country; or (2) a social media company that is controlled by a foreign adversary country and determined by the President to present a significant threat to national security. (Here, a social media company excludes any website or application primarily used to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews.)
The executive branch can selectively enforce laws, look at all the weed dispensaries the feds could just waltz into and have a federal case against everyone.
TikTok and its service providers are liable. “No one is enforcing” is meaningless, because they can still be prosecuted retrospectively if the US Government changes its mind.
Yup. They even asked for clarification on the “no enforcement” and the Biden administration basically just said “it is what it is”.
What big company is going to take a risk like that?
What are they risking, exactly? The entire company has essentially been banned from the country, so they have nothing to lose.
Being fined for not doing what the people in power what them to.
Hmmm existing with fines vs. not existing. Quite a dilemma.
What big company is going to risk a fine tomorrow for profit today? Literally all of them?
$10 says Trump influenced TikTok to go dark today to make him look better when it turns it back on tomorrow.
We all know they didn’t actually have to do this.
Not sure why you think it’s an own goal. Biden didn’t set the day for it to take effect, that was written into the law by Congress. You could say it was an own goal because Biden announced he wasn’t going to enforce it, but that seems to be the opposite of what you’re trting to claim And even with that decision to not enforce the law for 1 day before the Trump admin takes over, none of the companies TikTok works with like Apple or Google to list it in the app stores gave a shit about that lack of enforcement because of the uncertainty.
Not to mention Trump being the start of the ban in the first place. He was President when all of this started to work it’s way through the process, even if Biden was the President when it actually made it through Congress, with bipartisan support. Trump only changed positions because he wants TokTok to pay him to continue to allow it to continue.
More Americans have TikTok accounts than vote. For a shitload of normies who have only the vaguest notion of politics and current affairs, the app they’ve been enjoying gets cut off as the defining event of the waning days of the Biden administration. They are not going to care about how Trump tried to do it first, or it was bipartisan, or whatever. It’s hard not to see how this will cost Dems dearly.
No it won’t. Biden is already out of office as far as normies are concerned. He has been since the election, but definitely within 24 hours of inauguration. TikTok stops working and the next thing they see is Trump having a huge party with a shit ton of pomp and circumstance for his inauguration as he gets into the White House. And then TikTok still doesn’t work when they open it up. Maybe he brings it back, maybe he doesn’t. Voters don’t pay enough attention to separate his inauguration and the TikTok ban happening 24 hours apart, they’ll bundle it together as one event.
Unless he gets a massive cash infusion from Bytedance in the next 24 hours, he won’t give TikTok an extension on day one in office. He’s the kind of person that expects his payment up front.
So everyone will instead see it stop working as President Trump takes over, and then it continuing to not work after. Some may give him the benefit of the doubt, but they weren’t ever going to vote for anyone else anyway, he’s their God Emperor President and they’ve confirmed their world view around him being perfect.
Heck, he might try to spin it as some sort of promotional opportunity for Truth Social.
The law isn’t being enforced. TikTok can just put it back up tomorrow and imply it was Trump that did it.
That won’t stop Apple and Google from keeping it pulled from app stores until things are more concrete.
TikTok only blocked access and put that notice up in the app after their partners decided that a statement from the outgoing administration 24 before the transition wasn’t enough for them to not comply with the law.
Well, it definitely looks to have backfired on US government. The politicians figured that they could force Bytedance to divest TikTok using a ban in the US as a threat, assuming that TikTok wouldn’t want to lose access to the US market and the 180 million or so (!) users. Instead of complying, ByteDance did nothing and the politicians and the US government were put into a position of actually enforcing a very unpopular ban.
The timing of course is interesting. This comes right at the end of Biden’s administration, allowing for Trump to swoop in and lift the ban and take all the credit for that. Of course ignoring that is was Trump who originally kicked this whole thing into motion back in 2020 with his executive order to ban TikTok.
As designed by the republicans. There are legitimate reasons to regulate tiktok, if Biden opposed though, they’d say he was a weak Chinese sympathizer, if he complied, they’d do this.
It was a trap where you were fucked either way, as the republican think tank ghouls drew it out.
Didn’t Biden specifically say that enforcement was up to Trump?
Democrats getting played by Republicans, a classic.
https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/tiktok-and-white-supremacist-content/
No wonder why Trump wants to “save” TikTok. It has the stuff Republicans crave.
There’s still loads of bullshit surrounding the name. Hope your personal filters are up to the task the next 4 years.
Spreading for awareness, I’ve been posting this in relevant threads for a week - This is all theater.
trump is going to “save” tik tok after starting the initial push to ban it (for the wrong reasons) to pretend he did something for you. Worst part is that all of the no/low info voters and non voters will eat it up.
It’s the equivalent of a person pushing you into the middle of the street and at the very last second, that same person tells the drivers to all stop. “Wow, I owe you my life!”
And now, this adds two layers:
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You think trump and the Supreme Court are colluding? now they get to say, nah uh!!! Even though again, this is all convoluted.
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trump gets to look “stronger” than the “highest court in the land” to help delude the next generation of low info tiktok folks.
P.s. The Chinese “protest” apps are going to mine the FUCK out of these millions of phones in the brief window they have them. Also, when the kids inevitably move back to tiktok, majority of them will leave these other apps installed on their phones, dormant and collecting in the background.
I think there’s an even simpler explanation: political debt to Jeff Yass (15% tiktok owner) and his cash for the 2024 campaign.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/donald-trump-jeff-yass
Trump doesn’t have the power to “save” TikTok.
Why does Trump need to pretend to do something for you?
Trump has your support no matter what. He will rape children but you’ll line up to vote for him.
With that said he’s already in office. Your opinion is meaningless to him. He already got what he needed from you.
Stop trying to find reason in a situation devoid of reason. You’re clinging to that for personal comfort, if you feel like you can wrap it with a bow, you feel in control of it. You’re not.
He’s a broken narcissist and a psychopath. His dad didn’t love him and told him so. He’ll spend every worthless day of his life trying to get his dead dad to say “I was wrong about you”, and of course, his dad is dead so that won’t happen (wouldn’t have anyway, as that guy was likely an even bigger piece of shit, just not born with money like trump was so didn’t reach the same heights).
So ask yourself why you don’t realize the above. If there’s an end to this presidency, or if say he gets diagnosed with a terminal disease, there’s a non-zero chance he launches all of the nukes with the hope of a worldwide nuclear holocaust - because at the end of the day, if his life was ending, and you told trump he could press a button and be sure that nobody was laughing at him after death, posthumously convicting him of crimes or just pissing on his grave, he’d kill every single person on the chance.
A stranger’s opinion is meaningless to him? Brother, it’s fucking everything to him.
Nice doom posting bro 👍
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I’m starting to think of Trump as one of those old school firefighters that would set fires and then swoop in to put the fire out lol.
He was one of the first people saying to ban it in 2020. To me it’s more like he is easily swayed with lobbying so it ends up looking like he is a pioneer on pushing new policy when in actuality he is the first person people go to when they need to bribe a politician.
This is not unique to Trump. Politicians say “they changed their views” if there is enough oil to grease wheels.
Otherwise known by the modern term: Grifter
Except it doesn’t have the capability to put out fires, so it just starts them, then declares having put them out and leaves them burning
He absolutely is. All presidents are.
Those type of firefighters exists in droves still because that is not an old-school thing.
Yeah, but the ban passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, randomly jammed inside of the global military spending package including funding the Ukrainian war effort and the genocide in Gaza (which is a must-support bill for Democrats and Republicans alike I guess).
So I am assuming most Lemmy people don’t use Tiktok or Meta stuff. Here is some things you may or may not already know.
- Shou (CEO) made a parting video praising Trump on the last day
- Shou will be on the stage with all the other tech billionaires during inauguration
- People have noticed the last couple days that FB and Instagram have had a “link your Tiktok account” so you don’t lose anything on the platform
I think it’s pretty obvious now that Tiktok is going to become a part of Meta one way or another.
People have noticed the last couple days that FB and Instagram have had a “link your Tiktok account”
WTF, how is this not news everywhere?
It’s likely just staged bullshit so he can be the savior.
The entirety of global capitalism is lining up to bend the knee and gargle fascist balls.
This is what leftists have been warning forever. Capitalism wants the monopolies, bailouts — the political, financial and military backing, etc — that state-capitalist dictatorships provide. Democratically elected governments, acting in the interests of the people, are really the only threat to the corporate oligarchies wealth and power.
All of the wests “enemies” are equally supportive of fascism, because state-capitalist dictators are easier to influence (bribe).
Hey, look over here at the TikTok performative theatrics while we set up an oligarchy and rob you of your labor, your health, and your livelihood.
Tiktoks removel is not a distraction from oligarchy, it is oligarchy in action. This is meta collecting on what they paid congress for.
So wait, you’re complaining cause they did something? But if they had done nothing you’d also be complaining
You see me complaining? I’ve never used TikTok, but the entire controversy around it is just wag-the-dog type distraction.
I did some research and now I know why Trump wants to “save” TikTok.
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-tiktok-courted-conservatives-before-trumps-win
https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/tiktok-and-white-supremacist-content/
This one is especially damning:
TikTok is spending $50,000 on an inauguration party honoring influencers who helped Donald Trump spread his campaign message, according to the party organizer — and it’s scheduled for Sunday, the deadline for the company to spin off from its China-based owner or be banned in the U.S.
CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend.
$50,000
lol peanuts aren’t that damning… Capital in USA is spending millions and millions on Trump’s inauguration.
50k gets you an “I’ll see what I can do” .
Well yeah, it’s no secret that TikTok had a white supremacy problem. There was a researcher who discovered that they could make a brand new account and (by only interacting with certain types of content) get white supremacists on their For You page within 20 minutes. Algorithmic feeds are funny like that, because they just gauge engagement. The algorithm isn’t making any moral decisions on whether the engaging content is socially acceptable. For better or worse, it just goes “this person likes this content, so I’ll show them more.”
I know bad for democracy and everything but
This app has done nothing positive for my life, arguably began my social media addiction, filled my brain with negative content at the height of COVID and severely impacted my mental health
I don’t think governments should ban platforns. But do I think TikTok should have ever existed? No
And yet most of it’s users are either to stupid or addicted to see the issue and just switch to RedNote, no questions asked. Which in turn nullifies the ban altogether.
I dunno. Thanks to Black creators there, I learned about Tulsa, Rosewood, a lot about America indigenous culture, learned about the cops city protests and actions…
Sounds like TikTok was very good for democracy.
Don’t you need to learn these at school?
You would think… but those aren’t taught.
I find Tiktok haters funny. Vast majority aren’t users, and when you do find a user and they disparage the content, it’s pretty obvious that it’s a them problem and not a tiktok problem.
If you want tiktok to be cooking videos, just like nothing but cooking videos. If you want it to be about palestine, then like that content. If you want to be in MAGAtok, well that exists too. If you see nothing but thirst traps, that’s because those are the videos you actually fully watch. Your fyp page is just a mirror into yourself.
The only haters I can agree with are the ones who say “too many ads”
It helped my spouse deal with medical trauma by finding content creators expressing similar experiences. It worked better than any of the support groups which often felt more hopeless and isolating.
At this point though my spouse just hates instagram reels and how chaotic and pointless this is shaking out to be.
Sounds like a you problem.
it is a me problem
you want to subject yourself to doomscrolling and unresticted data collection? go ahead. i dont give 2 shits
Yes, it’s a you problem that you can’t control how you interact with your glass rectangle.
The glass rectangle is designed to be addictive. Should we let people and companies intentionally abuse addictive designs?
If not for TikTok Israel’s genocide would have gone unreported in Western media and censored on US social media.
I don’t use TikTok but I knew plenty about Israel’s actions. It was all over the internet and plenty of news sources.
Yeah because teens love opening the paper in the morning and reading about how Israel is “liberating” Palestine?
The majority of media and news learnin’ is not TikTok or newspapers.
Trump isn’t going to save them. He’s setting it up so one of us cronies will get it.
It is a nice asset why shouldnt an American oligarch own it though
Democracy, free market, and capitalism 🤡
It’s mine. My own. My precious…
People are reporting that Meta platforms just started allowing users to link their tiktok accounts a few days ago… take that for what you will.
That second paragraph is just vile. Donny brought this ban into motion and now they say he will save them?
The current Ban was not brought into motion by Trump, the current Ban started being discussed in congress in 2024, trumps efforts fell apart, shockingly enough. https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-timeline-ban-biden-india-d3219a32de913f8083612e71ecf1f428
if people can’t go this long without tiktok they’re addicted to social media and it should stay banned
There was kids and teenagers calling 911 because the service was down. I think we’re long past that concern
THIS SHIT MADE ME BURTS OUT LAUGHING
Should see a doctor. I burts out laughing once. 3 month recovery time.
❌
Tik Tok removed platform access from their US userbase voluntarily.
This was their choice.
The law is literally not even being enforced.
I hear that businesses existing in the face of unenforced laws are really stable and enduring. \s
Large businesses literally operate in conflict with the law until the law directly forces consequences, usually in monetary form. So, until they get caught and are forced not to do the thing. Explain to me why this is any different.
Multiple apps must have done so.
That’s what I see when I search for Marvel Snap on the playstore. Someone mentioned it was down as well earlier
Because they are distributed by a company that is owned by Bytedance. You know. The people who own Tik Tok.
Yeah, that’s why I brought that one up
Noteworthy thing I haven’t seen mentioned here: They apparently only removed app access. The website still works just fine.
The website didn’t work from US IPs last night, but it’s back already.
Bytedance’s long-term hope is naturally to be able to continuing operating everywhere without violating any laws. Right? Therefore, their strategy is to stay as compliant as possible with various national laws (within reason), right? Therefore they have to take a conservative reading of the bill (PAFACA). So let’s look at the text of the bill:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text
(1) PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS.—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following: […]
Now, the actual distribution of TikTok is done by a U.S. corp, incorporated in California and Delaware. That corp has to stay compliant with these laws. Therefore, to maintain or update or enable the distribution of an app as defined in this bill, is legally punishable. Make sense? Particularly because the law mentions them by name, there is basically zero legal defense against it besides contesting its constitutionality. Which the horrifically corrupt Supreme Court upheld.
So, probably the only way they felt comfortable resuming operations in the U.S. was with some kind of written agreement with the Trump admin - as of yet undisclosed.
What I find mad is that people are seriously depressed about this on /r/Tiktok. Yeah sure, I understand small creators now having a tough time having their business disappearing, but people are literally saying that TikTok was their only source of information and that they don’t know what to do now??
So the ban is reaching exactly the people it was set out to reach. Good.
Given the amount of nonsense that was on tiktok they’ll probably be more informed now.
What nonsense was on there?
There was a lot of misinformation and misrepresentation of world events. Mostly not helped by the short form content.
The Elder Millennial, for one
TikTok had a lot of great independent journalists on the app. I personally got a lot of good information from people on the ground about issues that I didn’t see talked about anywhere else on the Internet.
Tik tok had some amazing news sources. I’d say the Washington Post on there was pretty good, they actually reported on the bullshit going on at the paper as well. There was a lot of great sources on the app. I’ll say that tiktok is the only place you’ll see news on Palestine not from the pov of Israel.
I am only on mastodon and lemmy, yet I have only seen things from pro-palestan standpoint.
Believe it or not, building a ethical platform will encourage ethical news on there. Unethical platform might sometimes push ethical news, but eventually will only prioritize its own agenda.
What was tiktoks agenda?
This might sounds surprising to you, but all big tech monopolies love money more than their users.
They will push whatever agenda that makes them more money, and this is exactly what got every social media into the current enshittified stage.
Keep kissing their ass, then they will turn around and send your lips straight to Trump.
You empathize and educate.
Those people are too dumb for their own good. They were destined for failure no matter what.
