ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say

Oh no! Anyway...

It’s going to be to their advantage to claim that they’re shutting down, even if they actually want that $50B buyout. If they say they’re going to sell, they’re going to lose what little leverage they have left. The public that wants TikTok will get TikTok, and the public is going to stop pestering politicians about it.
- I read it as a bluff too.
  They’re between a rock and a hard place, their best position is to play hardball and rile up their users.
  Yeah, it means nothing to us to leave. We’re losing money!
  If that were really the case why are they in the US at all? Because they know they can make money and their market position is strong.
  
  Because China is trying to influence the US and they need to be in the US market for that
  
  But they can't continue to make money this way. It will be seen as control. So they're stuck creating a competitor or just writing off the US market.
- The public [who] wants TikTok will get TikTok
  In my family and peer group, the people who want to use tiktok and the people who could get and use a VPN to access a side-loaded tiktok app, has no intersect group. It's just a bridge too far for all of them.
  I'll push them onto the fediverse yet.
  
  Worst part about Lemmy being a tech heavy space is that so many users spout shit like “They’re not banning it, just deplatforming it” like yes, dipshit, that’s effectively a ban for something like 99% of people. You think 100,000,000 people are gonna fucking sideload the app? Love this place but it can be a bubble sometimes.
  
  Fediverse TikTok = TikToot?
- The public that wants TikTok will get TikTok, and the public is going to stop pestering politicians about it.
  Has their user base mobilized at all? Maybe it's just because I don't use TikTok but I haven't really heard much from their users about the ban. Which has been kind of unexpected.
  
  Apparently TikTok sent out push notifications telling users to call their representatives. Minors were being provided instructions with their representatives' phone numbers and contact info, but didn't even know who they were calling and were asking basic questions like "What is Congress?"
  Kind of shows the amount of power TikTok has over American youth.
  
  https://bowman.house.gov/2023/3/news-rep-bowman-leads-20-social-media-creators-at-press-conference-opposing-tiktok-ban
  You just haven't been paying attention.
- When you're forced to participate in capitalism, your only option is to play the game. I agree, this is mostly just a bluff.
- Why though? Why would they give up their trade secrets? They have a global market.
  
  They could sell the user accounts and content and let another company clip that into their own recommendation algo.
  I’ve been a part of a few tech acquisitions that have worked this way. They keep their secret sauce but hand over the community.

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.
- I mean the sale agreement could require the buyer to never expand outside the US.
- 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.
  
  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.
- YouTube/IG are hardly starting from scratch.
  But they don't have the international reach of TikTok.
  
  IG is owned by FaceBook which actually has about double the userbase of TikTok if you don't count DouYin's 700 Million. I kind of hope that they also fuck up and trigger Section I if not full blown Section H of the bill.
- 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, and if that data happens to find its way to China then 🤷 .
  Shell companies hide the true owner of companies all the time. Why can't TikTok do the same?
  The problem is they targeted TikTok specifically in the law and it will be easy to circumvent. "TikTok is banned, but check out this totally new website called TokTik with the exact same content but owned by a US Citizen".
  This is why they should have created regulations that apply to all companies. Because making regulations that depend on who owns the company will only cause TikTok to change the technicality of who owns the company. They can do so through all kinds of legal tricks without ever actually giving up control.
  
  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
  
  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.
  
  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.
- 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.

Do it.

TikTok's daily active users in the U.S. is also just about 5% of ByteDance's DAUs worldwide, said one of the sources.
So much drama in the US over this but it's apparently merely a money-losing afterthought for its owner.
- It's almost like making money is not the primary purpose of this website 🤔
  
  Or ... maybe the US isn't the only country in the world?
  
  I've always wondered what would happen if ByteDance sells TikTok for $5 to a US Citizen who frequently visits China for lavish vacations, and that US Citizen decide to keep all the algorithms the same.
  If China has an ulterior motive with TIkTok, can't they just find a US Citizen to carry out their ulterior motive?
  
  Yeah same with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, fox news, CNN, News max, Msnbc and every single other media outlet by that logic. Apparently any company not owned Merica is propaganda too.
- This means absolutely nothing.
  How much of their advertising revenue comes from the US. They have shopping, I’ll bet the US buys the most.
  China already has livestream shopping, it’s still relatively novel in the US. Bytedance has to compete with other local competitors in China, hating a nice external source of revenue in the US fuelling these Chinese battle is a huge boon.
  I know the article says loss making app, but I bet a lot of money goes back to R&D creating the loss. They pay massive sums to get merchants to sell on their app for example.
  
  This means absolutely nothing. How much of their advertising revenue comes from the US.
  To quote the article again, "The U.S. accounted for about 25% of TikTok overall revenues last year, said a separate source with direct knowledge." Honestly, I think that makes the case for shutting it down even stronger. TikTok isn't in some growth-at-all-costs phase in the US. It's likely near its peak potential userbase. If they haven't been able to make it profitable by now, that doesn't bode well for it ever becoming significantly profitable. Absent the legal issues, they think it's still worth at least trying, but as it stands, it's just a lot of money in and, just as quickly, out, with nothing to show for it at the end of the day.
  
  “Livestream shopping” is that like QVC or something?
- Looks like they're saying it's running at a loss and is valued at $50b, so that Musk would end up buying it off their hands.
  
  If they want Musks attention they should have valued it at $69b

EU next please
- Don't use it if you don't like it, but don't give this bullshit Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda control of something just because you don't like it.
  It's just as bad or good as any other algorithm based content app like Facebook or Instagram. If we have a problem with privacy for example then go after that like with gdpr.
  
  I think you have it backwards, in that it’s the US that’s trying to stop all the Chinese propaganda coming from that app.
  And if TT pull out of the US, it’s pretty telling that their core drive for that thing wasn’t money.
  
  I don't think it's primarily about the algorithm or "Public Enlightenment and Propaganda" but instead about data and company ownership. Currently the US and EU are far closer allies with each other than with china. Services that are owned/controlled by their countries are therefore prioritized, and competing services from non-ally countries are way more scrutinized.
  
  We already sanction TV stations because of their propaganda content e.g. Russia Today. I see this as no different.

If ByteDance is a normal company they will seek profits and sell for as much as they can.
But if TikTok is a Chinese psyop, they'll just use any of the many legal tricks we allow to change the "owner" while China still retains control. Companies do this all the time, look at shell companies and such. It's super easy for China to mask the true owner if they decide to.
This is why we should make broadly applicable regulations instead of picking on one specific company.
- If ByteDance is a normal company they will seek profits and sell for as much as they can.
  If the sale is forced, the value of the property will be depressed. Why would they take pennies on the dollar to liquidate IP rather than fight it out in court and try to get the provision overturned?
  This is why we should make broadly applicable regulations instead of picking on one specific company.
  The law is not specific to TikTok. It is any company owned by a subsidiary of an "enemy" state, of which China is listed as such.
  And selling the company to a non-Chinese holding company wouldn't work, because the dispute is over Chinese IP law affecting how ByteDance does business. Move the company overseas and it would no longer be covered by the IP provisions (something the Chinese investors don't want, because they benefit from the IP provisions).
  
  Does selling from one hand to the other actually matter when it comes to value? If I own a company and sell it to myself via a shell corporation have I actually lost anything, except a tax write off?
- I take no stance on the psyop thing but is always selling the best way to seek profits. I say no. Unless they can sell and somehow force the buyer to operate exclusively in the USA. If not then there is still the rest of the world to profit from and selling their entire USA branch would suddenly create a new huge competitor.
- So was google an American psyop for pulling out of China instead of submitting to censorship?
- Then Weibo and WeChat will geoblock US in response to TikTok ban.
- Tiktok is used globally. Only American politicians seem concerned about the platform why would bytedance sell it when they can just continue operating in 180 other countries around the world?
  
  It's not available in China though interestingly
  
  Actually many governments are concerned about it. But only the US (so far) had pulled the nuclear option.
  I feel like they're threatening a shutdown in the hopes of getting them to reverse their decision because if they just quietly go along with it, other countries will likely quickly follow suit in short order.
  The reality is that the lifespan of "most popular social media app" is incredibly short. In the space of a few short years, we've gone from MySpace to Facebook to twitter to vine to Snapchat and now to tiktok.
  TikTok will soon enough be replaced by "the next cool thing" and BD knows that if they sell in the US, that new entity will quickly replace them globally because the US effectively IS the influencer market.
  Viewers go where the content is, and that's still overwhelmingly American (for better or worse). There is no successful social media app without including the US and BD knows it.

I dislike TikTok but should you really be banning platforms you don't like?
Sanction them if they misbehave, yes. Prevent most of the population from communicating using it? Absolutely not.
Americans have weird priorities when it comes to freedom. The mental gymnastics I've been seeing trying to justify a ban of a platform to a massive population of people is nuts.
No, it isn't "actually upholding" freedom of speech to ban TikTok.
- Congress believes it's a national security threat which is probably true but they haven't bothered explaining this to their constituents at all. Ideally they'd pass comprehensive privacy protection laws to setup standards that both domestic and foreign companies would be subject to. Then companies either adjust their behaviors and meet a certain level of transparency or they would be prosecuted under the law.
  But no... We get this instead: a confusing and obviously targeted ultimatum with Congress telling everyone 'trust me bro this is the only way'.
  
  deally they'd pass comprehensive privacy protection laws to setup standards that both domestic and foreign companies would be subject to.
  No, no, no. That would mean dismantling PRISM and the FISA. Gathering data on citizens is only bad when China does it.
- I don't think most Americans want tiktok banned . Unfortunately the US government just does what ever they want and right now there is too much pro Palestine information on tiktok .
- should you really be banning platforms you don’t like?
  Yes, but only if that platform is Twitter
- lol you think “freedom of speech” includes foreign adversary right to harvest American citizen data?
  
  Exactly. I only want my data to be harvested by the NSA. It feels more patriotic.
- but chyna bad duh

So be it. The vaccuum it will leave will get filled by another platform.
- The whole point of this bill is for mark zuckerberg’s lobbying money to finally get people to use Reels
  
  Reels and YouTube shorts both suck, the algorithms push the most asinine content, or stuff I saw on tiktok MONTHS ago.
  
  They didn't lobby this bill. Google, oracle, did
- This the goal of this bill.

This is obviously a negotiation tactic.
If ByteDance doesn't want to sell their stupid algorithm, they could simply rip it out of TikTok, replace it with a random number generator or any other off-the-shelf recommendation engine, and proceed with the sale.
Find their lowest paid summer intern from the university computer science department, tell him to write some sort of recommendation algorithm and he has two weeks to do it, then whatever he comes up with make it live and that's all the new owner gets.
- I doubt the recommendation algorithm is particularly special, the userbase is the more important thing IMO. However, any purchaser would need to implement something decent if they want to maintain that userbase.
  
  Obv without the algorithm TikTok loses some value. However it loses less value than if they just pull the plug.

Good. Please proceed as quickly as possible.

The amount of people happy about their government deciding to ban websites and apps is terrifying. They dont give a fuck about your privacy they’re just mad they dont control the algorithm. Now they can have people move to instagram reels where its easier to serve the propaganda the oligarchs prefer
- And facebook isnt? Facebook did experiments on teens to see if theyre easier to manipulate when theyre depressed. They took money to apread fake news to manipulate voters for the presidential election. Yall are so blinded by the china boogeyman its absurd
  
  You wanna talk Chinese spyware, why are they not outright banning Temu? That's a much better documented case of actually being spyware.
  In terms of Tiktok being spyware, they are tracking users in much the same ways that every other big social media company is. Should other nations be worried about Facebook sharing that data with the US govt to produce psyops campaigns against foreign nations?
  I'm against any country blocking access to things in the name of "national security" and providing little to no evidence on it. Its been done too many times to trojan horse in other malicious activities that governments want to do.
  
  For spyware the cyber security community seems pretty meh about it...
- The u.s. still wouldn't control the algorithm even if bytedance sold because they are not required to sell to a u.s. company. As long as the new company isn't controlled by the ccp(or probably also russ, n Korea, iran) the u.s. doesn't care who owns it.

Don't threaten us with a good time!

This seems to be a pattern. Govts flex over tech companies, techs blackout a country instead of complying, repeat.
- That happens when the government doesn't create the technology LIKE IN COUNTLESS CIVILIZATION SIMULATORS

Good, that'll decrease the amount of stupidity in the platform for the international audiences to enjoy

That's fine, but I think they are lying.
And in case you don't understand, foreign corporations running FARA-unregistered influence operations isn't considered a facet of "free speech" in the USA.
- Okay great. Prove it in court.
  
  There's no legal case to be had.
  The constitution grants congress effectively unlimited power to regulate international trade. Citizens have rights. Foreign actors do not.

I'm curious, is there an actual plan to ban TikTok? How do they think they can accomplish that? And just how easy will it be to circumvent the ban?
- Having read through the bill, here's how it works:
  TikTok/ByteDance is mentioned specifically in the bill, so they have 270 days (iirc) to divest of "adversary country" influence (meaning China, Iran, Russia, N. Korea), meaning they'd have to be sold to a company based in a non-adversary country
  assuming they don't comply with 1, any app store ~~or ISP~~ hosting provider would be fined if they continue to preserve access to the app
  users can still use the app, but they have have network access blocked while in the US - so you'd have to use a VPN to use the app
  So to circumvent it, basically use a VPN to use the app, and for updates, you'd probably need to side-load on Android or something similar. I don't know how Apple's store works well enough to know what options users have to install and update the app after the ban.
  That said, there is no provision for making it illegal to use the app, the onus is entirely on companies facilitating access to the app.
  Edit: I was wrong about the ISP. After a reread, it's talking about server hosting. So a server cannot be hosted in the US, nor can a server in the US distribute copies of the app, or host source code for the app.
  
  "Controlled by a foreign adversary" and "foreign adversary country" are the key phrases. The definitions are here.
  It refers to United States Code title 10 section 4872(d)(2), which says:
  Covered nation .— The term “covered nation” means— (A) the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea; (B) the People’s Republic of China; C) the Russian Federation; and (D) the Islamic Republic of Iran.
  I think those phrases are important when discussing any potential "slippery slope" aspects of this bill. It's about companies/applications from specific adversary nations. It's not about just any service that annoys a US politician. The bar here is much higher, and the scope is narrow. While it does identify ByteDance and TikTok by name, it will also apply to other companies from those nations, if they are determined to present a threat to US national security.
  I haven't read the entire bill, so please don't take this as advice, but in principle, I think it seems like a sensible measure. A major communication platform like TikTok makes a very effective propaganda and misinformation tool. Exactly the sort of thing that an adversary nation would use to sway political discourse, influence elections, even undermine a democracy.
  Of course, any law can be abused, so paying attention to how this one is applied and enforced will be important, just as with any other.
  
  This is a good oppertunity to teach young people about tech
  
  Does is specify ISP blocking directly in the bill?? It was my understanding that it would just prevent US based app stores (Apple, Google) from distributing the app in their stores.
  I'm not even sure how ISP blocking would work, unless it was to just blackhole DNS queries to tiktok.com. Having attempted to block DNS lookups for TikTok on my own home router via PiHole, I can say that the app either hard codes IP addresses, or resolves DNS over HTTPS independently of the system DNS settings, so I doubt a DNS based ISP block would be feasible.
- This is about banning their ability to do business in America, not just trying to ban access to their content on the Internet itself.

Extremely hostile business takeover by the government.
- Don't worry, It's OK when the US does it.
- U.S. wouldn't be taking over... it could be a New Zealand company for all the u.s. cares.

'Notha one Bytes the Dance

They'd rather shut it down cause they dont want to sell it and let an American company see how they use and abuse it to gather information and manipulate behaviors.
- As if an American company wouldn't just pick up where they left off... have you seen Meta? The system needs regulation, not a change in ownership to preferred snoopers.
- Maybe they are willing to sell and are just saying this to drive up the price.
  Or maybe they don't want a competitor to have access to their secret algorithm, and threaten them globally. This way they lose only one market.
  Another possibility is that they will teach users how to use a VPN, and are confident that enough of their users will do it.
  Or maybe they think saying they're willing to shut down will make some of their users lobby against this bill / organise protests / call their representatives. (This probably won't work.)
  Companies are ultimately motivated by money. They will do whatever underhanded trick they can think up to get it.
- They are free to sell to non American companies just fine as long as the new company is not ultimately controlled by the Chinese government.
- LMAO, apt name. You do know that facebook, a known disinformation company, is american, right?
  
  Yes, and they should be shut down too. though the difference is facebook is a private entity and tiktok is a tool owned and operated by the chinese government.
  You're point?
  
  Burn them all.
  
  I don't recall the previous commenter mentioning anything about Facebook. Making a comment that is anti something doesn't automatically mean they're pro something else.
  Step 1: Feel like getting into a comment section argument
  Step 2: Put words in the other guy's mouth and argue against those
  Step 3: Make yourself look like a bit of a tool
  Is this the best use of your time?