This is perfectly fine. The owner of a device should be deciding what software goes on there. And if it’s city-owned, then the device should only be used for official city business. Nobody needs TikTok on their phone except maybe an official city social media manager. Apps that are not required for work have no business being on devices that are for work.
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He’s got CEO money, but can he afford TikTok? It doesn’t seem like it. Maybe if he goes in with a group.
What will the USA use instead of TikTok once it’s banned?
Reels? Shorts?
What if TikTok is sold to itself as a child company? Call it TokTik. Would it still be able to dodge whatever this is?
The whole point is more to force the sale than a ban. It only has to be the US operations (not global tiktok), but it also has to include a copy of the core algorithm for the new standalone company or acquiring company to run fully independently.
I would not expect anything to shake out for years though because ByteDance is going to file a federal suit and a judge will likely put an injunction on the law taking effect until the court case is resolved.
I’ve seen some people out there spreading the information that TikTok/ByteDance are largely not owned by China. This is true information.
If you look at who owns most of the shares in ByteDance, who is on the board of directors, you won’t find too much Chinese ownership.
60% is owned by “global investors”, meaning publicly traded shares. Unknown what percent of those are in China. 20% is owned by the founders, who I think went to the beach. They are Chinese, but do they have influence on the company? 20% is owned by the employees, some of which are Chinese many of which are not.
And then there’s the so-called golden share owned by the actual Chinese government. This is not a large amount of shares. It might even be a single share? It’s not entirely clear. There is some information suggesting that this special share gives them some sort of veto power over the other shareholders. TikTok says the golden share only exists for the purpose of Internet licensing for the Chinese business. It could also be a purely symbolic gesture.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/tiktok-bytedance-china-ownership-intl-hnk/index.html
The point I want to make is that it doesn’t matter who owns the shares. Let’s say I owned 100% of the shares in ByteDance. Well, it’s still a Chinese company. Subject to Chinese law. Beholden to the Chinese government. I would have to, as the US owner, relocate the company outside of China to remove it from Chinese jurisdiction. The easiest way to do that is to sell it to a non-Chinese company.
The problem is that because it is a Chinese company, China can block a sale. Even if 100% of the shares were owned by a US citizen.
Even if China bought 100% of the shares in Apple, it would still be a US company. Unless they moved it or sold it. Which they could try to do, and the US could block.
TL;DR: No matter who owns the actual shares, or sits on the board, of ByteDance/TikTok, it is a Chinese company beholden to China.
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The “ban” is also clever. It can’t take effect until 2025 (after the election), and Biden has the nearly unilateral power to defer it.
TikTok is hopeless now.
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The TikTok ban is actually sad because so much work people have made will be gone, or at least inaccessible. Much bigger loss than when Vine shut down.
My hope is that people will not go out in search of a new app, but will instead just stop doomscrolling altogether.
Of course, that seems unlikely. Savvy users have preemptively switched to XHS, an app that is even more Chinese than TikTok. I expect most people will switch to something else, or use a VPN.
I don’t even have a TikTok account, but I do occasionally watch a TikTok video in the browser without signing in. This usually happens when it is embedded in a web site, or shared on Reddit/Discord. I can see myself in those cases possibly using a VPN to see the video if it’s really that important for some reason.
While they are justified in trying to ban TikTok to keep out Chinese propaganda and influence, it is not being done entirely in good faith. The Democrats in favor of the ban have legitimate national security concerns. The Republicans that want to ban it may also share those concerns, but they also want to make sure US citizens are only using platforms with their propaganda.
Case in point, you can see what’s going on over at Meta right now with Zuck licking the boot and kissing the ring.
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It took out Marvel Snap along the way. (It being Chinese companies dialing up the pain).
The fact that they call out how “President Trump” will fix it is dangerous and worrying.
The law did not require them to turn off all these other apps. It only applies to social media apps, not games. But every app belonging to ByteDance (the TikTok company) and all its subsidiaries was turned off. Clearly this is a move to exert pressure, and not merely to comply with the law.
I’m also very curious about the technical implementation. In China the great firewall blocks things very easily. All the ISP simply refuse to route traffic to/from anyplace they want to censor.
This is quite different. The US Internet is still completely open. No ISP or other network provider in the US is doing anything to block TikTok or anything else.
The app stores have to remove the apps, but ByteDance went ahead and had the app stores remove other apps as well.
The way I see it there are only two ways this block could be done. One is where you check the IP of the visitor, and if they have US IP address, you block them. This is easily avoided with VPN. There are also some US users out there who have non-US IP addresses, and vice versa, even without VPN usage.
The other method is if you have various regional servers, you just turn off your US servers. Users who don’t use those servers will be just fine. However, there are many non-US users who use the US servers who will be blocked. There are also people in the US who do not use the US servers. I’m very curious if users in Guam, who are almost definitely using APAC servers are blocked, even though they legally should be as it is a US territory.