Key details:

1. New, US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users.

2. 80% owned by a U.S. investor consortium led by Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz, 20% by Bytedance.

3. Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director.

4. All U.S. user data would sit on Oracle infrastructure in the US.

5. Algorithm will be initially licensed, but has to be reengineered to comply with the law.

Not discussed - whether the US tiktok app is allowed to compete with TikTok outside of the US. My guess is NO.

• mullingitover

  today at 1:25 AM

  This seems like the microwaved corpse of the original 2020 deal. Bytedance keeps all the IP, sells Oracle the nearly worthless right to operate the US infra. They can't even call their franken-app Tiktok. The US user data already sits in the US but they'll expect everyone to forget about that so they can brag about this token win.

  They'll probably get what they really want, which is an admin console for the algorithm that has a 'political slant' slider that they can slide as far to the reich as they wish.

  • ivape

    today at 3:32 AM

    This shit is crazy that it’s really happening. The double whammy is that the youth is not prepared intellectually and will continue contributing their data in this platform.

• jfengel

  yesterday at 7:44 PM

  Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director.

  Why?

  The nominal reason for all this is that we didn't want a Chinese company controlling an important social media outlet. I don't love that reasoning, but fine, whatever.

  So they're forcibly selling it to an American company. Which should solve the problem, right?

  Are we going to be putting government-appointed directors on all social media companies? Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese?

  Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it?

  • glenstein

    today at 1:17 AM

    >Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it?

    Well, yes, for starters. I think there's a pretty strong consensus from people on all sides that there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one.

    It's the beneficiary of powerful network effects, it created those effects for itself with a superior app, but nevertheless it is a distinguishing feature. I also would say it's culturally positioned perhaps the best of any major social media app over the present and near term.

    And in its current ownership it's required by statute to comply with Chinese national security data requests. And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.

    • ethbr1

      today at 1:50 AM

      >> Are we going to be putting [US] government-appointed directors on all [US] social media companies?

      > And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.

      Agreed.

    • giancarlostoro

      today at 2:04 AM

      I think its pretty obvious how and why, every other platform copied the key parts of Tik tok, youtube has shorts, and others have their own rendition. What they all miss is that this IS Tik Tok its not some additional part of Tik Tok. It's a simple UI that gives you endless content you like, they tag all the content in a meaningful way behind the scenes, and then the recommendation engine works to feed you more of what you like.

    • mullingitover

      today at 1:38 AM

      > there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one.

      I really have to disagree at this point. Meta has all the money in the world to throw at this, and inference isn't rocket surgery. I think Meta's algorithm caught up a couple years ago, if anything it's even more addictive. Tiktok is simply riding on first mover status, plus it's a Coke/Pepsi thing, a large segment finds Meta properties distasteful for all the obvious reasons.

      • wnc3141

        today at 2:53 AM

        I think it's more the product design is far more distilled for popular (and addictive) short term content. From ad placement to UI to the format of solely being a frictionless video platform with mostly anonymous users.

      • 0000000000100

        today at 1:54 AM

        I agree (not OP). The difference in addictiveness between the three big boys (Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) grows smaller with every passing year as their back-catalog of content grows.

        Pretty much everyone I know consumes TikTok style content these days. I personally have blocked myself from this stuff via deleting the Insta, YouTube and I even wrote a TamperMonkey script to block myself from getting trapped down the rabbit hole.

        Self shout out: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/534969-begone-youtube-shor...

  • staticautomatic

    yesterday at 10:32 PM

    Seems obvious to me that this is so the government can force the platform to silence users who are critical of the government.

    • slg

      today at 2:43 AM

      You're right, it seems obvious. Considering the number of self-professed "free speech absolutists" I have encountered on this site over the years, I'm surprised at how much benefit of the doubt others are giving this.

    • tdeck

      today at 3:26 AM

      Particularly the Israeli government.

  • zamadatix

    yesterday at 9:31 PM

    It's an interesting question, but the information we have so far doesn't seem to be enough to give a meaningful answer yet. E.g. is it something like "one person appointed to oversee the full terms of the transition are kept" or "one person appointed always to make sure TikTok aligns with the government".

    I'm not necessarily a fan of either... but to vastly different levels.

  • kelnos

    yesterday at 10:02 PM

    Because Trump wants a proxy so he can continue to influence the direction TikTok takes. He wants easier access to data so he can go after his political opponents, as well as get things censored he doesn't like. Of course, this would all be possible without someone on the board, but it can't hurt, and likely will help.

    • LadyCailin

      today at 12:26 AM

      If TikTok removes something, would the fact that there’s a government representative on the board give standing for a first amendment claim? Normally private companies aren’t required to furnish you with first amendment rights, but if one could argue that, if not for the board representative, they might not have prevented that speech, then perhaps you would have standing.

      • wolfcola

        today at 1:31 AM

        Yeah, the supreme court will get right on that

        • epistasis

          today at 2:42 AM

          As soon as the appointee is appointed by a Democratic politician, at least.

  • nujabe

    today at 2:41 AM

    That is a seat reserved for AIPAC.

  • yibg

    yesterday at 7:52 PM

    Remember though, it's only bad when the other guy does it. We don't want Chinese government involvement in TikTok, but we do want US government involvement. /s

    • groggler

      yesterday at 9:20 PM

      The "Be all you can be" slogan requires more than just a great firewall that China should pay for, it needs a constant vigil to protect it from German nihilists.

    • glenstein

      today at 1:18 AM

      I mean I do want the world's most influential social media app to be within the jurisdiction of a non-authoritarian state, yes.

      • jfengel

        today at 2:33 AM

        So... we're transferring it to one who requires a government representative on its board?

• vehemenz

  yesterday at 10:18 PM

  > Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director.

  In other words, one's data will now be under the scrutiny of amoral radicals who have decided to target people for political speech.

  • delfinom

    yesterday at 10:37 PM

    We are slowly becoming Communist China.

    Won't be long until all companies will be required to have a party office.

    • athorax

      today at 2:33 AM

      This is such a funny take. In China corporations operate at the behest of the government. In the US the government operates at the behest of corporations.

    • jimmydoe

      yesterday at 10:59 PM

      maybe, but i think what I see here is trump is not interested to beat china, just see what he did with s korea and india.

      the only thing may indicate that trump is competing with china is how hard he's trying to please putin, but apparently he needs to work harder to get into the organ harvesting club.

  • jameslk

    yesterday at 11:06 PM

    This has always been the case. Such as the White House asking for certain moderation on Twitter (revealed in the Twitter Files) and Meta, Patriot Act, and of course everything Snowden brought to light

• hvb2

  yesterday at 6:46 PM

  > All U.S. user data would sit on Oracle infrastructure in the US.

  Legally required to use the services of a specific company, that's a sweet deal right there.

  • rtehfm

    yesterday at 7:34 PM

    As part of Project Texas[1], they've already been using Oracle's infrastructure.

    > The central feature of Project Texas is our work with Oracle to isolate the TikTok services serving U.S. users within Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment as an additional safeguard. Although gateways to the storage infrastructure are strictly monitored and controlled, U.S. users of the TikTok platform can still communicate and interact with global users for a cohesive global experience.

    [1]https://usds.tiktok.com/usds-about

  • hamburglar

    yesterday at 8:55 PM

    TikTok has been on Oracle cloud for years. One of its biggest customers.

  • foota

    yesterday at 11:27 PM

    I suspect the legal requirement is for it to be in the US, the Oracle part is probably just because they're the ones investing.

  • justapassenger

    yesterday at 9:46 PM

    [dead]

• mrtksn

  yesterday at 8:12 PM

  That’s very interesting, I wonder if the toxicity of the American culture wars can be contained this way.

  Also, I see creators, trying to create US based TikTok accounts because they believe that this way their content will be shown to Americans, which are better monetized. If that’s the case, I wonder if international creator will move to the American TikTok for the better payout.

  It the international creators stay with the international TikTok IMHO that will be a huge win for China, practically displacing American culture for the younger demographic in the rest of the world.

  • LeafItAlone

    yesterday at 10:07 PM

    >I wonder if the toxicity of the American culture wars can be contained this way.

    Look at recent events: American government officials want to maintain the same level of toxic culture wars that foreign governments want. They just want to control them, not contain them.

  • vehemenz

    yesterday at 10:19 PM

    Giving power to the radicals that want division wouldn't have that effect, and it's bizarre to even suggest that it would.

  • basisword

    yesterday at 8:18 PM

    >> I wonder if international creator will move to the American TikTok for the better payout.

    If I were China I would do this deal and then ensure that the payout is better outside the US. Try to sway US content creators to use VPN's and post outside the US and essentially limit the impact of the deal.

  • imiric

    yesterday at 10:04 PM

    > I wonder if the toxicity of the American culture wars can be contained this way.

    Huh? Are you not aware of US social media companies?

    Everything that's happening on TikTok is also happening on X, Facebook, Friendster, or whatever the kids are using these days. The only difference is that the TikTok algorithm promotes Chinese propaganda and ideology, and enriches the Chinese government and ByteDance. The US can't have that, hence this deal.

    This won't affect the American downward spiral a single iota. That would require strong regulation of social media companies and adtech in general, and there would be a nationwide revolt if that were even proposed. This is far from being considered anyway, now that Big Tech is deeply entrenched in the government.

    • glenstein

      today at 1:23 AM

      >This won't affect the American downward spiral a single iota.

      Broadly speaking, I think you're probably right that the dynamics on tiktok already exist elsewhere in social media. But I do think a practical upshot of it could be a version of Tiktok where you can criticize the Hong Kong takeover or Xinxianj labor camps or harassment of expatriate dissidents or Taiwan indepence openly and not have it soft-deplatformed. Which could cause stronger domestic consciousness of those issues, and stronger solidarity with Europe and the rest of the Western world.

  • dr-detroit

    yesterday at 8:19 PM

    [dead]

• doctoboggan

  yesterday at 7:58 PM

  > 1. New, US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users.

  IMO this significantly impacts the value I would get from TikTok, as much of the content I consume on the app is from outside the US

  I guess they are hoping the US market will be big enough so self sustain and even entice some foreigners to join the US only app?

  • morkalork

    yesterday at 8:12 PM

    Wait, so for everyone else this means American content will be off the main app and be contained? If this stems the tide of MAGA brain rot seeping north into Canada it's an absolute win.

    • raydev

      yesterday at 8:57 PM

      MAGA content is easily avoidable, because the algo already prioritizes what you engage with. For me in Canada, there's just a lot of funny/insightful US-based content I do watch.

      TikTok got significantly less interesting when the US blocked themselves earlier this year, if that happens permanently it'll probably hurt TikTok worldwide.

  • UncleOxidant

    yesterday at 9:31 PM

    Will people just stay with the old app out due to inertia? Or will there be annoying "blocked in your country" type messages until you switch? (at which point you won't know what's been blocked in your country)

    • aranelsurion

      yesterday at 10:18 PM

      Will there be an old app and new app available both to US residents? I don't see how that'd help them reach any of their stated goals, as I'd expect overwhelming majority of users to a) simply not care and stay, b) prefer the better international app with more content from all around the world

• rs186

  today at 1:19 AM

  In other words, TikTok US becomes TruthSocial Reels?

  I wonder where all the liberal content will go.

• roughly

  yesterday at 8:19 PM

  > 5. Algorithm will be initially licensed, but has to be reengineered to comply with the law.

  The government board director is one thing, but what exactly does this mean?

  • cvoss

    yesterday at 8:46 PM

    The law simply requires that the content recommendation algorithm not be shared between the two apps. [0] Thus, it must be rebuilt by the new team, and not maintained or controlled by the old team.

    The licensing approach is a temporary solution to keep the app working from day 1. One of ByteDance's complaints during the lawsuit earlier this year was that is was going to be technically infeasible for engineers to rebuild something as complex and essential as the content algorithm in the short window of time they had before the law went into effect.

    [0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...

    "The term “qualified divestiture” means a divestiture or similar transaction that ... would result in the relevant foreign adversary controlled application no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary; and ... precludes the establishment or maintenance of any operational relationship between [the two apps/teams], including any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing."

    • roughly

      yesterday at 9:16 PM

      Gotcha, ok - that’s less alarming.

  • doctoboggan

    yesterday at 8:33 PM

    "Hey Claude, please re-write this algorithm"

    • downrightmike

      yesterday at 9:15 PM

      I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

• jodacola

  today at 2:24 AM

  Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of TikTok and have many critical opinions of Ayn Rand’s philosophies, but…

  This gives me vibes of a weird company takeover, a la the kinds of things that happened in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: government-driven benefits to large corporations and investors with friends in the right places, government involvement, forced licensure of a core aspect of the product (Rearden Metal?).

  I’d like to learn more about: what are some other similar instances of such a thing?

• downrightmike

  yesterday at 9:00 PM

  10% of intel 80% of TikTok ??% Meta ??% Google ??% Amazon ??% S&P500

• sharadov

  today at 12:05 AM

  Of all the tech companies, Oracle seems to be making the most and a killing due to Larry's cosy relations with Trump.

  Last week's announcement that they have a 500 B deal with Open AI, and now this.

  Elon really fucked up!

• fluidcruft

  yesterday at 7:24 PM

  Key details:

  1. DOA app nobody wants

  2. whocares

  3. see 2

  Good luck to the administration while trying to roll this out.

• basisword

  yesterday at 8:17 PM

  >> US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users

  Very interesting! The separate "in content" bit in particular. Sounds like US TikTok will now be one giant echo chamber. Users outside the US will miss some US content but tbh, I find TikTok content is actually quite localised anyway. Big benefits for users outside the US are:

  1. US doesn't get my data.

  2. Hopefully less US political BS to swipe past.

  3. I am much less concerned with the sway China has on Western Europe than the sway the US has and am therefore much happier using a China-backed version of the app sans US content/users/control/propaganda. The extreme brain rot causing people outside the US to care about 'MAGA' or that recently assassinated man will hopefully start to recede. That can only be a good thing. We have plenty of our own polarising issues without importing irrelevant ones.

> one member designated by the US government.

Why does the board of TikTok need a gov member? Is Meta going to get a gov chaperone too? And Oracle surely needs one as well.

Is the gov putting out a call for board member civil servants? Like where does this person even come from?

• duxup

  yesterday at 1:21 AM

  Same reason they put a guy at CBS as a "bias monitor":

  https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-fcc-cbs-ne...

  They want their guy to make sure things go their way / people say the "right" things.

  • throw310822

    yesterday at 7:15 PM

    > a guy at CBS as a "bias monitor"

    Kenneth Weinstein.

    "Mr. Weinstein has had a long career in right-leaning and neoconservative public policy circles. He is a firm and vocal champion of Israel." (NyTimes)

    • throw0101d

      yesterday at 8:05 PM

      * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_R._Weinstein

    • hopelite

      yesterday at 9:29 PM

      This is precisely why I don’t see the value of “right” and “left”, because it’s absolutely useless and even a distraction from understanding the true nature of these types of topics. It has absolutely nothing to do with “right” or “left” and everything to do with overarching interests.

      • hopelite

        today at 2:38 AM

        So at least 5 accounts not only do see the value in dividing people into “left” and “right”, but they also were compelled to vote it down?

        Or was it just abuse of the system?

      • octopoc

        yesterday at 11:15 PM

        I've been wondering if enough people would be single issue voters on the Israel question that we could actually get some sort of candidate who attracts a ton of voters from both traditional parties.

        It's ironic because (IMO) people like Ben Shapiro and other pro-Israel people deliberately divide us to prevent us from uniting against them, but the genocide has actually united us[1]. Just the other day I saw a Twitter post from one Cenk Ugyur reaching across the aisle and saying "good job" to right wingers who objected to hate speech laws against people who celebrated Kirk's assassination.

        Admittedly, if 68% of Americans are opposed to Israel that doesn't necessarily mean all of them are single issue voters... but I think this is the first issue I've seen in my lifetime that gets this close to uniting Americans.

        [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-militar...

  • piva00

    yesterday at 4:26 PM

    Didn't expect to see the USA employing press censors in my lifetime but here we are.

    In Brazil during the dictatorship it was common for newspapers to print cooking recipes in place of censored articles, now I'm waiting to see if media in the USA has the balls to play the malicious compliance game... I guess I won't see it since money is basically God in America.

    • xboxnolifes

      yesterday at 5:14 PM

      One could argue they're not the same, but there has been TV broadcast censors for decades in the US. They were still least following somewhat defined laws though.

      • tempodox

        yesterday at 8:00 PM

        > They were still least following somewhat defined laws though.

        I expect them to continue to do so, except that uncle Donald is the law now.

• overfeed

  yesterday at 7:23 PM

  > Is Meta going to get a gov chaperone too?

  I believe the technical name is "Political Commissar."

  Edit: Dana White, of MMA fame, now sits on Meta's board, though it is at Zuckerberg's request.

• mandeepj

  yesterday at 7:33 PM

  > Is Meta going to get a gov chaperone too?

  They already got quite a few, post 2024 election.

  https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/dana-white-john-elkann-cha...

  https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/14/tech/robby-starbuck-meta-ai-a...

  • Cornbilly

    yesterday at 9:49 PM

    Ha. I hadn’t seen the news in the latter link.

    Washed-up music video director to professional Twitter poster to advisor at Facebook. What a display of the American meritocracy.

• phs318u

  yesterday at 2:11 AM

  Oracle doesn’t need one.

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32596903

• thrance

  yesterday at 6:10 PM

  It's the political komissar, here to make sure nothing too critical of the current administration is allowed on the platform.

  • hopelite

    yesterday at 9:36 PM

    This goes way beyond this current administration and has nothing to do with China, besides being the foil for the real reason of controlling what people can see and hear because the cabal that controls the USA does not like it.

    • thrance

      yesterday at 10:54 PM

      Just so we know, who's the cabal?

      • hopelite

        today at 2:22 AM

        Any do you act ignorant?

• coffeebeqn

  yesterday at 4:03 PM

  What do you mean - the CCP has always had someone sit on the board of major companies… oh wait which country was this again?

TikTok dealt a serious blow to the Western consensus manufacturing apparatus. We saw that with Gaza especially. This deal is a step towards taking back control.

• bootsmann

  yesterday at 6:12 PM

  Taking back control by _checks notes_ handing the Chinese propaganda tool to supporters of the current administration?

  • yibg

    yesterday at 7:56 PM

    Yes exactly. The US government likes propaganda. They just don't like it when other countries do it.

    • lenerdenator

      yesterday at 8:02 PM

      That's how all ruling classes and governments throughout history have operated. It's now just mask-off in a country that people mistakenly thought didn't do that sort of thing.

      • yibg

        yesterday at 8:16 PM

        Yea agree. The US used to be good at making the world believe they're all about freedom and rights etc. Now they don't seem to even bother trying anymore.

        • 0xDEAFBEAD

          today at 3:22 AM

          I read a lot of anti-American comments like this one, mostly on American websites like Hacker News and Youtube.

          I'd say the anti-American comments outnumber the pro-American ones something like 10 to 1.

          The US may not be preaching about freedom and rights. But it seems to be practicing it, at least in the narrow sense that anti-American content isn't being censored or suppressed.

          • yibg

            today at 3:32 AM

            Can't speak for others.

            My "anti-American" comment is due to the difference between what's preached and what's practiced. "Leader of the free world", "greatest country on earth" etc. I also wouldn't characterize my comment as anti-American so much as disappointed in America.

            There is of course more freedom in the US than in say China. But I'm also not holding up China as a beacon of freedom. The US on the other hand, the land of the free, freedoms and rights are being eroded.

  • fullshark

    yesterday at 7:26 PM

    You wrote this as a snarky rebuttal but you seem to be agreeing with OP? Confusing post.

  • paganel

    yesterday at 7:12 PM

    Yes, indeed. As the current administration, any US administration in the last 30-40 or years in fact, is for a fact very pro-Israel, so a move like this can only cement that stance.

• fullshark

  yesterday at 4:17 PM

  Maybe these crypto-zealots who scream about decentralization will actually try and build a thriving decentralized media instead of pumping and dumping shitcoins?

  • cogman10

    yesterday at 4:45 PM

    The problem is that it's hard to make these things popular.

    There are several ActivityPub services that are pretty good and even have decent UXes, but they aren't super active.

    A major issue is it's confusing and the funds are limited.

    • frollogaston

      today at 2:08 AM

      Federated chat/social always goes back to similar usability and technical problems as email, except with a broader scope so it's even harder

    • SketchySeaBeast

      yesterday at 7:10 PM

      Yeah. I'm on Lemmy and Mastodon, but it ain't exactly jumping, and I'm sure part of it is definitely the confusion around how to get going and what it is. Lemmy at least is also pretty buggy, and I'm not able to find posts I saw a few hours ago, but ultimately I don't really know what the draw is or even could be for the average user.

  • zer00eyz

    yesterday at 7:43 PM

    > try and build a thriving decentralized media

    This exists today, it has always existed, and you never needed technology to find the solution to it.

    Im a huge fan of the film Rope, because it is just done well. Its also got a ton of coding in it for "homosexual" themes that were very much banned at the time of filming. Understanding these paints the film in a whole new way...

    Shakespeare has a ton of contemporary satire coded into it. Unless you're aware of history or reading a version that illuminates the meta-context you would very much be unaware of its existence.

    It happens in modern film: Paul Verhoeven is a master of it.

    If you dont think there are coded communities on existing social platforms sharing information among in members I have news for you.

• corimaith

  yesterday at 6:47 PM

  More like walking straight into another form of "consensus manufacturing". You are not more informed than people a decade ago.

  • fullshark

    yesterday at 7:27 PM

    It's not a matter of more or less it's a matter of what information you receive and in what order.

• SilverbeardUnix

  yesterday at 6:33 PM

  Oracle owned Tiktok with right-wing and Trump friend Larry Ellison at the helm is a step in the right direction? That's crazy.

• throwaway29812

  yesterday at 6:10 PM

  [dead]

I'm not an expert but this makes me think that it might time to turn off the screens and stop letting half-trillionaires decide what we look at.

• amatecha

  yesterday at 7:27 PM

  Use Fediverse/ActivityPub, XMPP (maybe matrix), IRC. Use protocols, not "apps"/"platforms". Stop using corporate-owned centralized services. Well, unless you like being the subject of exploitation and manipulation of course.

  • t0lo

    today at 2:18 AM

    Protocols are good- but respectfully at this point fediverse is basically a transgender support group.

  • deadbabe

    today at 12:45 AM

    The nuance of protocols vs apps though is lost on the masses. Most people just want to stare at reels or be stared at in reels.

    This means that the only people you will encounter in protocols will be privacy freak type nerds and “normal” people you might actually feel better interacting with or watching are on popular apps.

• prawn

  today at 12:58 AM

  Without screens, how do you get the scale needed to organise and influence the direction of your country?

• fogzen

  yesterday at 9:37 PM

  It's time to go take the half-trillion from them.

  • yesterday at 11:00 PM

Is this a coup by conservative government to gain control of this social network to promote it's ideologies?

first Twitter, now Tiktok, both controlled by conservative interests?

• panarchy

  today at 12:54 AM

  Russia Today American Edition

  • selimthegrim

    today at 1:18 AM

    I mean why not unban them too?

• fogzen

  yesterday at 9:25 PM

  Yes. And to enrich their buddies and campaign donors like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

  • peanuty1

    today at 12:24 AM

    I thought Ben Horowitz supported Kamala during the 2024 presidential election.

    • jrflowers

      today at 12:48 AM

      He did not.

      https://sfstandard.com/2024/08/16/felicia-ben-horowitz-party...

      • hn_throwaway_99

        today at 1:06 AM

        Man, the sheer transactionality that guides these people's lives is pretty disgusting to me. Granted, you probably don't get to be a billionaire unless you are pretty transactional, but I am kind of thankful that the vapid hollowness of these billionaires (despite always cloaking their rapaciousness in some sort of larger societal purpose) has been laid bare over the past few years.

  • pstuart

    yesterday at 10:14 PM

    That's bonus. The real thing is to make tiktok a right-wing ideology machine. I'd rather have the CPC than the GOP at the helm.

    • jm4

      yesterday at 10:56 PM

      I don’t want either of them, but credit where credit is due. China is doing well as a country and the standard of living has increased even if it’s under an authoritarian regime. I wonder how long that will last. Meanwhile, the USA is becoming Russia. Basically a bunch of misinformed morons living in the past and thinking we are on top of the world while we accelerate towards irrelevance on the global stage if not for a massive stockpile of nukes.

      • neves

        today at 12:06 AM

        Remember that you can't have a democracy and increase the standard of living of your people and don't have USA planning a coup.

      • at-fates-hands

        yesterday at 11:19 PM

        >> China is doing well as a country and the standard of living has increased even if it’s under an authoritarian regime.

        What do you mean "doing well"?

        https://asiatimes.com/2025/05/chinas-economy-on-cusp-of-a-de...

        May 2025:

        Tariffs are drying up international demand for Chinese goods, and in a bid to keep factories alive, Beijing is urging exporters to turn inward. However, that pivot is compounding the very problem it aims to solve.

        Deflation isn’t an abstract threat in China anymore—it’s visible across the economy. After barely holding above zero for much of 2023 and 2024, consumer prices have now dropped for two straight months.

        Producer prices have fallen for 29 consecutive months. March’s figures showed the sharpest drop in four months, and forecasts point to an even steeper decline in April.

        • thatfrenchguy

          today at 12:52 AM

          Look at the past 15 years in the US vs the past 15 years in China, it’s fairly obvious

        • acdha

          today at 12:12 AM

          Yes, trade wars suck but overall if you’re a young Chinese citizen today you’re doing better than your parents or grandparents could’ve dreamed:

          https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

          Yes, I’m fully aware that’s starting so low because of horrible governments in the past and that the current government is far from great, but that’s still moving in the right direction at the time the United States is trying to speed run to a Russian-style oligarchy and most people under 50 think it’s getting worse.

        • onraglanroad

          today at 1:11 AM

          It's a strange set of affairs where prices dropping is a terrible thing and prices increasing is good.

        • FridayoLeary

          today at 12:00 AM

          It's really odd how many people on hn are pro china. Why? They are not good guys. At all.

          In moral terms they are so far behind the West they are in a different team. (and don't throw in disingenous deflections like gaza and whatever, those are orders of magnitude less bad then China) The West is full of freedom and the pursuit of happiness and wealth. China isn't.

          Nobody here is pro Russia or Iran, or even particularly pro India. So why is Communist China different?

      • yesterday at 11:12 PM

    • throwaway346434

      yesterday at 10:56 PM

      What an insane thing to say! But also... how insane is it that I agree with you based on objective reality? Can you imagine seriously saying that 20-30 years ago? 1984's doublethink/doublespeak always seemed over the top, yet we are at a point particularly recently where the anti cancel culture sentiment has lead to... proposals to curb undesirable speech, cancelling people... which in turn is undesirable because it criticises a propagandist's undesirable speech with his own post death quotes in a lot of cases and bristles when accused of sane washing. Or that this won't matter in a few more news cycles as we lurch brokenly into the next phase of dystopia.

      I wonder how many historical parallels exist and what the outcomes were; IE https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_colors_(Japan) - which I think lead to a flourishing of clothing design for commoners. Like will we see massive social change in two or three generations hence as a rejection of the current hysteria? Will history books record the silliest parts that now seem quaint with a little distance, IE War on Christmas? Mission accomplished? WMDs that didn't exist? Etc etc.

      • Grosvenor

        today at 12:07 AM

        > wonder how many historical parallels exist and what the outcomes were; IE https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_colors_(Japan) - which I think lead to a flourishing of clothing design for commoners

        So that’s where the name of that David sylvian / ryuichi sakamoto song came from.

        I always thought it was just a throw away from the subject matter.

      • pstuart

        today at 1:34 AM

        The CPC is not attacking the US from within. The Party of Trump has carried out a fascist coup and they are now working to ensure they stay in power permanently.

        I loath partisanship and am more than willing to point out failures by the Dems, but this is different. Trump and Co have openly stated that they don't believe in democracy.

        If you are not able to see this I'm not sure what I could say to open your eyes.

    • NicoJuicy

      yesterday at 10:37 PM

      The GOP is still more incompetent than anything I've ever seen.

      Bullying, yes. Competency, no.

      • dghlsakjg

        yesterday at 10:51 PM

        So incompetent that they control all three branches of the most powerful government on earth. Much of that can be credited to their media ownership strategies.

        Underestimate them at your own peril...

      • cosmicgadget

        yesterday at 11:43 PM

        It takes a lot of competence to defeat the concept of an objective fact.

      • jm4

        yesterday at 10:52 PM

        Really? They are following Putin’s playbook and getting away with it. Controlling media and sharing the spoils with the oligarchs. Together, they are robbing us blind. What about what they are doing makes them incompetent? Evil, yes. But incompetent? They are winning! You think this ends with the next election or when ol’ Agent Orange kicks the bucket? Things are going to be very different here for a very long time unless we collectively get our shit together in a big way and take it back.

      • frogperson

        yesterday at 10:57 PM

        They put loyal, useful idiots on the public stage. The real leaders are not on TV, you dont even know their names.

• yesterday at 9:23 PM

• dfxm12

  today at 12:10 AM

  It's a page in the conservative playbook going back a long time, from consolidating newspapers to talk radio to TV stations and now a new type of media...

  • bandyaboot

    today at 1:21 AM

    And now we see them getting main stream networks on a leash.

    Edit: Not to mention universities. It’s crazy how quickly civil institutions are being consolidated by the right. They have gone all in and there appears to be insufficient appetite to stop them.

• UncleOxidant

  yesterday at 9:23 PM

  Seems like it. It seemed kind of inevitable. Biden made a mistake going down this road - of course, Trump started the ball rolling during his first term, but Biden should've just left it alone because it wasn't hard to see that this was the likely outcome.

  • tw04

    yesterday at 9:33 PM

    Biden? You do realize Trump attempted to “ban” TikTok in his first term when the original Oracle “deal” happened, right? Pinning this in Biden takes some serious mental gymnastics.

    https://www.npr.org/2020/09/20/914032065/tiktok-ban-averted-...

    • UncleOxidant

      yesterday at 9:38 PM

      Yeah, I do realize that and in fact mention it in the comment above: of course, Trump started the ball rolling during his first term. Not "pinning" it on Biden, per se, but he is the one who signed the bill. It would have been much better to leave it alone. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-what...

    • ribosometronome

      yesterday at 11:20 PM

      Do you suspect Biden had a little plaque on his desk saying "The buck stops somewhere else"? He signed the bill. If he didn't want to own it, he doesn't have to put his name on it.

    • dfxm12

      today at 12:11 AM

      No one can seem to remember who was president in 2020...

    • yesterday at 9:43 PM

    • whyenot

      yesterday at 9:38 PM

      Biden signed the bill.

      • 1121redblackgo

        yesterday at 11:59 PM

        With very large and rare bipartisan support

• zappb

  yesterday at 11:03 PM

  This law passed during the Biden administration, but its implementation has been delayed repeatedly by the Trump administration.

  • estearum

    yesterday at 11:15 PM

    > but it has been broken repeatedly by the Trump administration

    fixed that for you

    The bill itself outlines specifically how and why it can be delayed. That was violated in the very first "delay".

    • buckle8017

      yesterday at 11:29 PM

      Turns out not having any penalty for the executive failing to apply the law is a mistake.

      Who could have predicted this.

      • conception

        yesterday at 11:47 PM

        There is a penalty just congress has to enforce it.

        • buckle8017

          yesterday at 11:52 PM

          The only penalty congress can enforce on the executive is cutting the budget of things the executive wants funded.

          • estearum

            today at 12:16 AM

            Also this only matters if the Fed is independent. If it’s not, the President can direct it to purchase unlimited treasury bonds, effectively printing unlimited money to fund any program it wants.

            Paired with this administration’s assertion of impoundment powers and the pocket rescission, the Congress’s power of the purse is completely neutered in both directions. The executive can decline to spend whatever it doesn’t want to, and it can fund anything it does want.

            Recklessly funding the government off of the Fed’s balance sheet will of course cause all sorts of nasty economic effects, but that’s exactly why you need to print money! So your massive immigration enforcement apparatus (newly full of ideological minions thanks to the current hiring surge) can go and assert powers of process-free expedited removal throughout the entire country (per DOJ memo from week 1).

            So the economic consequences hardly matter: you simply deport whoever complains.

            • mullingitover

              today at 12:51 AM

              It turns out that if you won't impeach an executive on any principle whatsoever, you may as well grab the boot and put it on your own neck.

            • skissane

              today at 1:17 AM

              Maybe the best solution is to adopt a parliamentary system of government? With the executive formally subordinated to the legislature, it can’t spend money against the legislative majority’s wishes, because if it upsets the legislature, the legislature votes it out of power (commonly with no supermajority required, just a simple majority vote in the more numerous legislative house)

              • estearum

                today at 1:51 AM

                Absolutely. There's a reason the US didn't replicate its own structure when it set up governments in Europe and Japan.

          • smw

            today at 12:02 AM

            or impeachment?

    • ninkendo

      yesterday at 11:34 PM

      I mean I’m as anti-Trump as the next, but didn’t the bill say it could be delayed to finalize a sale to American owners?

      You could make the case that this sale means the Trump admin actually didn’t break the rules here.

      • BryantD

        yesterday at 11:55 PM

        It said it could be delayed with some pretty specific parameters. Quoting the Congressional Research Service report on the bill:

        "The President can grant a one-time extension of up to 90 additional days when a path to a qualified divestiture has been identified, there is evidence of 'significant' progress toward executing the divestiture, and there are legally binding agreements in place to enable the divestiture."

        One could argue all day about whether or not there was an identified path or evidence of significant progress, but certainly there weren't legally binding agreements in place at any point, and the deadline has been extended far more than once.

        Trump is ignoring the law. The DoJ has asserted that Trump can ignore the law because it would interfere with his duty to "take care of the national security and foreign affairs of the United States." It is unclear what, if any law, could not be ignored under this doctrine.

      • wbl

        yesterday at 11:47 PM

        Only one extension was allowed.

• frollogaston

  today at 2:09 AM

  Biden was on board with the TikTok takeover, and it had support from both left and right wing pro-Israel groups.

• peanuty1

  today at 12:23 AM

  It's a coup by pro-Israel interests like Larry Ellison and Andreessen Horowitz.

  • no_wizard

    today at 12:49 AM

    This has been floating around since the end of the first Trump administration, where neither of these interests were accused of being “pro-Israel” but only entrance narrative after the current Palestine debacle:

    Therefore I’m only left to conclude this is an entirely unsubstantiated claim, as why wouldn’t it have already been apparent if they were working as shadow brokers of Israeli interests in all this, which the general timeline and verifiable information we know don’t line up with?

    • PieTime

      today at 12:54 AM

      Is this an AI comment? They have vast business interest and contracts with Israel.

    • sporkxrocket

      today at 12:54 AM

      The people who have been very vocal about forcing US ownership of TikTok have also been very, very open about their Zionism on social media. A16z has been pushing for this hard since the start of the genocide. Zionists blame "TikTok" for their opposition. They even call the younger people who don't support Israel the "TikTok Generation".

      This along with the consolidation of other US media assets under Zionist control, is very much about Israel and attempting to gain a monopoly on the media.

      • SilverElfin

        today at 1:38 AM

        > This along with the consolidation of other US media assets under Zionist control

        Conspiracy theory.

• CharlieIsAHero

  yesterday at 9:31 PM

  So nothing will change? It’s just pushing Chinas ideologies at the moment. Oh I think I hit a nerve with the CPC army on HN.

  • LeafItAlone

    yesterday at 10:02 PM

    I’m not sure what you are saying… Are you suggesting that US Conservative viewpoints are aligned with those of China’s government?

    • renewiltord

      yesterday at 10:17 PM

      Well we’re clearly in the “don’t interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake” territory.

    • cosmicgadget

      yesterday at 11:43 PM

      Allied, not aligned.

I fully expect a decent number of people in favor of this to, without a shred of irony, whine about wanting a free market whenever environmental regulations are in the news again.

• 2OEH8eoCRo0

  yesterday at 11:11 PM

  What are principles?

  • an0malous

    today at 1:28 AM

    Rhetorical devices to get a certain demographic to buy your product.

    Open AI, free speech platforms, save the planet, democratize information. At the end of the day, it’s always about power.

Useful additional context

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/top-trump-ally-may-soon...

Reminds me of Yahoo buying Tumblr. Mismatched. Their best bet is to change little to nothing, but not sure the administration will let them.

• jerojero

  yesterday at 6:28 PM

  It does seem mismatched but it's also an opportunity for Oracle to become relevant in the space, if they handle it right.

  Though yeah, if they go the Yahoo-route it's going to be a huge waste. But it's really up to how the company handles the acquisition.

  Yahoo missed big time by just trying to change the culture of the userbase way too quickly. They didn't like that people were posting porn on Tumblr when that was one of the most important aspects of the platform for the users. They bled way too many users and took way too long of a time to do anything about it.

  I feel like Tumblr should have done their own patreon/OF type of push within the platform but they didn't have the vision. They literally had all the creators of that type of content at some point and they've now all moved to X/Twitter.

  I hope (i mean, idgaf but you know it's a figure of speech) that Oracle has a better perspective about the issue so they don't commit another billion(s) dollar(s) crime.

>Current users of the app will be asked to shift to a new app

So it's just going to fade into obscurity then huh

• reaperducer

  yesterday at 6:20 PM

  So it's just going to fade into obscurity then huh

  We won't be so lucky.

  • cjbgkagh

    yesterday at 7:50 PM

    What's to stop ByteDance from waiting a while and making a new TikTok app under a different name? The network effect moats do not seem insurmountable. I'm sure once the US starts meddling with the algorithm people will start looking for alternatives.

    • basisword

      yesterday at 9:58 PM

      >> What's to stop ByteDance from waiting a while and making a new TikTok app under a different name?

      I'm sure this deal is more complex than "ByteDance is not allowed to run an app called TikTok within the US". Politicians are morons so I could be wrong but I would hope it's much more liberal than that.

so US users will be cut off from the rest of the world? Wow. Thats crazy.

• TranquilMarmot

  yesterday at 2:51 AM

  TikTok in China is already cut off from the rest of the world. The US is just copying China's homework.

  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2

    yesterday at 4:06 PM

    This. I think people in general misunderstand the allure of power and the means to maintain it. Power centers in US are drooling at the opportunity to do what China has done in terms of controlling discourse and language. The interesting thing is that they all assume that this particular measure of control would never be turned against them.

    edit: Adjusted weapon to 'measure of control'. I accept people are a little too happy to overreact lately.

    • kaveh_h

      yesterday at 6:40 PM

      In a democracy where the politicians change every 4-8 years this is receipt for disaster. The next administration will undo action taken by the previous one. In effect destroying any momentum or progress for achieving anything. For China and Russia this is not a problem because of the totalitarian state.

      • dashundchen

        yesterday at 7:19 PM

        These fascist Republicans are not intending on giving up power. A bit China mixed with the sham democracies of Russia, Hungary or Turkey - this is the model they're going for.

        What do you think the push behind the new gerrymandered districts is for?

        Why do you think they are assembling a national voter registration database that hasn't existed before? https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-doj-national-...

        Why are they creating fake emergencies to justify inserting federal police and the national guard in major cities with big Democratic voting populations?

        • braebo

          yesterday at 8:07 PM

          Get your surprised pikachu memes ready for the day martial law is called to permanently postpone the election.

        • MiiMe19

          today at 12:40 AM

          I thought conservatives were the conspiracy theorists.

          1. Gerrymandering is and always has been a thing, blue and red. Nothing has changed.

          2. Government puts government data from multiple government places into one government place. More news at 11.

          3. Because you get stabbed/shot for just existing in them? Because of the riots earlier this year?

          Fascism = Something I don't like. Get a grip.

          • today at 1:15 AM

  • lukewrites

    yesterday at 4:55 AM

    We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk.

    • rchaud

      yesterday at 4:08 PM

      "Democratic People's Republic of America"

    • morkalork

      yesterday at 2:43 PM

      Careful now, you don't want to accused of spreading hate speech

    • palmotea

      yesterday at 4:02 PM

      > We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk.

      Except China doesn't actually serve its people. Things are way more cut-throat there, with much less safety net. The Chinese government sees workers as grist for the mill, not something to be cared for.

      • johnisgood

        yesterday at 4:07 PM

        > The Chinese government sees workers as grist for the mill, not something to be cared for.

        I think this is universal, but perhaps China indeed may be worse.

        • tsunamifury

          yesterday at 4:48 PM

          There is a significant difference in a population of 70 million educated workers who need to be maintained for high performance and 400 million low skill workers who are highly replaceable.

          I am trying to make no judgement here, just explaining then 'motivational environment'

          This math of course is in flux to a degree we haven't seen in maybe 1000+ years though right now.

      • estearum

        yesterday at 4:08 PM

        Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US.

        • rtkwe

          yesterday at 7:09 PM

          I think you can it's just shifted by several decades because China took a long dark detour through the Cultural Revolution. QoL exploded in the US in the Post War period, partially imo because we were the only industrialized economy that didn't have significant homeland attacks during WW2 so the US got a straight shot to the top of the heap. China got a similar QoL lift through a similar path, mass manufacturing (this time business taken from the US by being far cheaper) and growth of in country expertise. Now even China is feeling a similar cost squeeze drawing some business to smaller neighbors. They're also just so much larger they can sustain a larger gradient between coasts that look closer to '1st' world costs and poorer interiors where cheaper manufacturing can be done.

          • estearum

            yesterday at 8:38 PM

            Sure, but what's relevant is what sort of political and cultural pressures we're all experiencing now. Maybe China is just a few years behind on the same crunch trajectory we're on, maybe not, but that doesn't matter much to what's going on today.

        • palmotea

          yesterday at 4:53 PM

          > Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US.

          The Chinese rural population still isn't eligible for local equivalent of social security in their old age (that's only for city folks), and IIRC there was a huge unwillingness to provide financial assistance to individuals during COVID.

          • estearum

            yesterday at 6:03 PM

            Sure, and also quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory.

          • Zigurd

            yesterday at 7:49 PM

            A few hundred million of that rural population have become city folk.

      • pphysch

        yesterday at 4:25 PM

        A government-provided safety net is not an absolute good; you need to ask what holes are being filled.

        Just because you have fewer full-body casts than someone who just got in a bad wreck, does not mean you are worse off.

• basisword

  yesterday at 9:59 PM

  This is just the first step (and a big one given TikTok's reach) to a US great firewall.

• TMWNN

  yesterday at 5:07 PM

  More like the other way around.

  US users are today 21 of the 49 TikTok accounts with the most followers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...> (not including TikTok itself). When the Trump administration came close to forcing a divestment/shutdown on TikTok in 2020,[1] Americans were 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue.

  [1] And boy, do Democrats who shouted Orange Man Bad back then now wish they had supported the move

• pier25

  yesterday at 5:02 AM

  Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of global users ended up using the US app instead of TikTok.

  • kelipso

    yesterday at 12:57 PM

    You won’t get the option to do it through the app stores, so pretty much no one’s going to do it.

  • 20after4

    yesterday at 12:31 PM

    Why would anyone want to use OracleTok?

    • 0xcafecafe

      yesterday at 4:44 PM

      TikTok is banned in India. OracleTok might not be.. So that's a lot of potential users.

    • pier25

      yesterday at 1:55 PM

      Same way everyone uses all the other US apps?

      • palata

        yesterday at 5:05 PM

        In this case we're talking about them actually having a choice.

      • magnio

        yesterday at 4:02 PM

        Like Tiktok?

      • yesterday at 4:49 PM

  • basisword

    yesterday at 10:01 PM

    Nope. I get a lot localised content. The local food reviewers etc. won't miss out on US views. The people creating content in local languages won't notice a difference either. 15 years ago I think things would have went differently but now I think people will want the non-US version. And I wouldn't be surprised if US users grab themselves a VPN and a pirated APK and use it too.

If anyone want's to save stuff off tiktok just incase this doesn't go through, just remove the "OK" from the URL, ending up at https://tikt.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44283876

I am ashamed to be an American. We are going to have so much healing to do.

• tasty_freeze

  today at 12:42 AM

  I'm 61. I've told my kids I could not have ever imagined we got to the state we are in, with the president trying (and largely succeeding) in advancing the "unitary executive" abetted by the Supreme Court. Hell, I wouldn't have believed it even 10 years ago.

One thing I’m looking for in all of this is how trump will get a piece of this deal.

• kranke155

  yesterday at 9:59 PM

  Larry Ellison and A16Z will invest in Truth Social, buy Trump Coin, help his family, (or something) just asynchronously enough that it can’t be directly connected to the TikTok deal.

  • LeafItAlone

    yesterday at 10:33 PM

    Doubt they feel the need to wait. Nobody is going to do anything about it, just like nobody has yet done anything effective about the other blatant corruption. Look at the Saudi “investment” in Trump’s crypto.

basically seizing a foreign product/service. should do wonders for the 'free market'

With, apparently, a board member appointed by the Trump administration.

The U.S Steel deal included three board seats, but the Intel deal did not include any.

This is starting to look like the way China does things, with the central government having a financial stake in important companies.

• SilverbeardUnix

  yesterday at 6:34 PM

  I'm not a fan of the administration by any means but a lot of democracies do this. Public/Private partnerships are commonplace in Europe.

  • kelnos

    yesterday at 10:13 PM

    Is it common for this sort of company, though? I can see public-private partnerships making sense for infrastructure, for example, but a social media company? That just sounds like a way for a country to censor and push propaganda.

  • jay_kyburz

    yesterday at 8:25 PM

    Yeah, I don't mind the public profiting if public money and or concessions were made to set up the business. And especially for bailouts!

• thinkcontext

  yesterday at 8:43 PM

  > With, apparently, a board member appointed by the Trump administration.

  Trump has essentially selected all of the board members. Its not a coincidence that Larry Ellison and Andreessen are big Trump supporters. The amazing corruption continues.

  • delichon

    yesterday at 8:50 PM

    > The amazing corruption continues.

    Also known as industrial policy. They are inseparable.

Between this and the US government taking ownership in Intel the "small government is good" and "socialism is bad" crowd have been very very quiet.

• Zigurd

  yesterday at 7:53 PM

  But its different. It's national soc... Wait...

• cosmicgadget

  today at 12:04 AM

  They have been on a leash since the first term. Look what happened to Paul Ryan, the deficit, money supply, and federal reserve balance sheet.

• deepsquirrelnet

  today at 12:21 AM

  The term has been so abused that it’s no surprise the current administration was going to push in that direction themselves.

  All it takes is a minor rebranding and half the country or more would immediately sign up for it. For all intents and purposes, socialism just means “the people we don’t like”. As long as people feel like they’ll get theirs, I seriously doubt they care what economic system they’re living under.

• yoyohello13

  yesterday at 8:49 PM

  The Evangelical thought-police republicans seem to have beat the libertarian republicans into submission.

Oracle owning TikTok is one of the most unintentionally funny things to ever happen.

• dessimus

  yesterday at 6:03 PM

  Users better be running now before they get hit with those new licensing fees.

  Oracle: "Your phone has 6-cores and our minimum plan is 64 cores. Additionally, we see you upgraded from an iPhone 16 to the 17. Licenses don't transfer, of course. You owe us 3 kidneys."

• polishdude20

  yesterday at 12:49 AM

  It's like a 100 year old with hardware crypto wallet.

  • abirch

    yesterday at 7:10 PM

    Not sure why I thought of Bill Belichick

• 1270018080

  yesterday at 6:40 PM

  I've always been fine with Tiktok dying, surely that will be expedited under their leadership

• palmotea

  yesterday at 4:07 PM

  > Oracle owning TikTok is one of the most unintentionally funny things to ever happen.

  I'm hopeful. With any luck they'll ruin TikTok and it will die, a satisfying result.

  • elzbardico

    yesterday at 4:38 PM

    First they will start launching TikTok Enterprise.

    An all-buzzwords compliant subscription based solution for enterprise and professional content creators.

  • jerojero

    yesterday at 6:21 PM

    why do people hate TikTok as a product so much?

    if TikTok dies then one of the alternatives: instagram reels or youtube shorts would take its place.

    the brainrot will be the same. I guess people think tiktok's algorithm is particularly pervasive over Google's or Meta's? But I don't see why.

    • andrewflnr

      yesterday at 6:38 PM

      Those "alternatives" didn't exist before TikTok, not the same way. Hating the inventor of a drug more than the copycats is reasonable IMO.

    • pests

      yesterday at 6:30 PM

      For me it’s the potential china influence. Reels and Shorts is at least American and I already have established relations with both companies.

      Are we for sure the TikTok algorithm doesn’t bump towards or away from certain issues? The data on the cultural zeitgeist? The ability to promote political messaging?

      Brainrot the same. Intentions, maybe not.

      • jerojero

        yesterday at 6:38 PM

        People keep saying this but shouldn't it be kinda trivially easy to check?

        Start new accounts, swipe through the content and establish what kind of algorithm it is. The few attempts I've seen on youtube seem to indicate it's heavily based on your geographical area. They don't really care that much which side the apple falls onto.

        I do acknowledge that there's a latent threat that could be activated. And I can see an argument being made on that front, I mean, China doesn't allow access to a lot of American social media for that reason. But I don't really buy the argument right now as I haven't seen a lot of evidence of Tiktok doing things that Meta/Google haven't done.

        • saulpw

          yesterday at 6:48 PM

          It's delightfully naive to think that a new account is 'fresh' and can't be associated with previous usage.

        • pests

          yesterday at 6:44 PM

          Like you say, they could target different messages for different geographical areas. Similar to how in the election last year Dearborn, MI (highly middle eastern) got different messaging from both Trump and Kamala wrt Isreal/Palistine compared to the rest of the country on traditional ads.

          They can target any age range or demographics, any interests.

          We had Uber hiding things from LEO almost a decade ago via geofencing and other tricks, I’m sure it’s a bit more sophisticated now.

          You keep bringing Meta/Google into this. I don’t care if they do the same things. I mean, I wouldn’t like it either, but we have solutions available to us. We can pass laws or go to court and handle it internally. A foreign nation is not bound by that.

    • elzbardico

      yesterday at 7:10 PM

      Larry will sue those alternatives for 'stealing' tiktok IP.

  • kilroy123

    yesterday at 6:04 PM

    I immediately had the same thought. One can hope!

  • scythe

    yesterday at 6:08 PM

    The "good" news is that they will only own the US operations, with the ROTW continuing to be operated by ByteDance. So if they diverge too far from the original product we can expect to see a discussion about life behind the Great Firewall of America.

• oldpersonintx2

  yesterday at 5:36 AM

  [dead]

I'm curious how bad the misinformation type stuff will be.

It's bad everywhere, but I found TikTok to be the absolute worst. Not even just fake news political stuff where I can guess the motivation (still bad), but just basic everyday tips and tricks, local users describing news events. I've found it to be so much worse on tiktok.

Other platforms there seems to be "more" intent by creators to provide somewhat consistent / factual content. Tiktok often feels to me like content accuracy / quality isn't a concern for most creators.

• Workaccount2

  yesterday at 8:28 PM

  I don't know about tik-tok, but Instagram is totally unhinged. Boobs, butts, gambling, brain rot, watchbait/ragebait, all that stuff.

  YouTube shorts gets all the hate, but I find the content to consistently be the most sophisticated? PG rated? educational?

  • jghn

    yesterday at 9:40 PM

    > Boobs, butts, gambling, brain rot, watchbait/ragebait, all that stuf

    I don't understand how other people have this experience and I don't. I see targeted ads of course. And every once in a while it starts showing me content for things I don't follow, at which point I start mashing the button they provide to make it go away, and after a handful it pops up something asking if I want to remove all suggested content for a while. I always select yes.

    Do other people actually *want* suggested comment? that's bizarre.

    • asdff

      yesterday at 10:12 PM

      Most people aren't actively curating their feed like this. They see an attractive person, eyes wander for a few seconds longer than the usual post before scrolling away, and that is enough.

  • duxup

    yesterday at 9:37 PM

    I agree, YouTube shorts tends to be noticeably better.

• quickthrowman

  yesterday at 5:05 PM

  Short form video is basically worthless outside of comedy and cute animal videos. The format does not allow enough information to determine whether the information provided is accurate or not, for videos that have facts in them. Every time I watch a short form video I feel an overwhelming urge not to trust what I saw and verify it elsewhere, now I just don’t want short form videos at all.

  • emddudley

    today at 1:10 AM

    Short form video is tailored for the fast, instinctive, emotional brain. Not the slower, deliberative, logical brain.

  • vkou

    yesterday at 5:26 PM

    The modern propaganda machine does not run on meaningful facts, nor does it give a shit about not being able to convince you.

    It cares about convincing people in general.

Lol is that why the Oracle stock jumped. Probably someone timed it with the other announcement to make it look innocent.

The USA forcibly nationalized TikTok so they can install their own surveillance and censorship apparatus along with skimming from TikTok's profits. All while decrying China for... the same thing.

• vehemenz

  yesterday at 10:25 PM

  Republicans, not USA

  • crummy

    today at 12:16 AM

    Isn't this as bipartisan as it gets? Trump wanted China to divest from Tiktok. Congress passed the bill. Biden signed it. The Supreme Court agreed that, yes, this is legal.

    Sure, people didn't vote for Larry Ellison to take control. But something like this is what we wanted, right?

• hollerith

  yesterday at 9:28 PM

  >The USA forcibly nationalized TikTok

  Unlike most nationalizations though in this case the company will be compensated: the new US entity will pay ByteDance licensing fees.

  • fogzen

    yesterday at 9:33 PM

    Isn't that how it works in China? At least since the 80s. The CCP forces companies to insert their state-backed fund and officials into the cap table. Either through golden shares, forced mergers with state-owned enterprises, or forced equity sales.

    • hollerith

      yesterday at 9:34 PM

      I dont know.

Oracle is then going to mandate license fees from every user, together with 22% support fees with 8% increase every year.

They'll then rewrite TikTok in Java, and migrate to Oracle Database.

• 1970-01-01

  last Tuesday at 10:51 PM

  The Android .APK files are already Java.

  • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

    yesterday at 3:55 PM

    To be fair, that doesn't mean they can't be re-written in Java.

  • palmotea

    yesterday at 3:56 PM

    IIRC, but I read the TikTok app is mostly WebViews, which was a design choice to help keep it functioning in the face of an App Store ban.

    • anon1395

      yesterday at 4:01 PM

      IIRC TikTok is built using their own framework, https://lynxjs.org/

      • giancarlostoro

        yesterday at 4:20 PM

        I totally forgot about this... I might have to look at it again. Thank you.

• cosmicgadget

  today at 12:06 AM

  The Enoracleification of Tiktok.

• lupusreal

  yesterday at 4:21 PM

  They're going to send thugs into businesses demanding to see if any of their employees are secretly using TikTok on company time, then demand the business buy a million dollar corporate license.

I think it's bad news if the US government owns Tiktok data rather than the Chinese government.

Chinese government won't prosecute me. US government might.

  The State Department also said it would crack down on non-citizens who have made posts making light of the shooting.

  “In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country. I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted on Thursday. “Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the @StateDept can protect the American people.” [0]

[0]https://time.com/7316628/charlie-kirk-death-celebrations-soc...

• jcarrano

  yesterday at 4:00 PM

  When you reach the point of choosing the lesser evil, you might just as well uninstall TikTok.

  • aurareturn

    today at 2:09 AM

    If you're a Chinese citizen, use all American services and hardware if you can.

• mothballed

  yesterday at 4:01 PM

  I've come across at least one businessman who refuses to use anything but a Chinese phone he bought in china, with chinese sim card and chinese apps, for that exact reason.

  • hereme888

    yesterday at 6:24 PM

    That's strange. It wasn't because China mandates government spyware on phones?

• rchaud

  yesterday at 4:06 PM

  It's not about owning the data, it's about controlling the message.

• corimaith

  yesterday at 7:12 PM

  >Chinese government won't prosecute me. US government might.

  It's arguments like this that reminds of the critique of libertarians as akin to house cats that seek to undermine the very systems that allow them to exist in the first place that wouldn't survive outside for minute. Or maybe it's just agitprop right here.

I've built a 12k follower audience for TikTok's on product management and project management. Time to migrate to YouTube.

This would just make them go in a situationship.

Both are not compatible with each other in any way, but they are in a great deal, one they can't say no to.

This is where either one fails or sometimes both.

Questions regarding the US government-appointed director (CCP style?)...

IIUC, Oracle has strong connections to the CIA, and Andreessen the person lately seems right-wing activist.

1. Under the current administration, maybe it doesn't much matter that there's a government monitor?

2. But if a more left-wing administration comes back into power, then a government appointee there could help moderate the other influences?

Are there any other examples of something like this happening? A successful (foreign) app is forced to be sold to a US company just because of its country of origin? What happened to the free market? It's remarkable that privacy is even in the conversation when FAANG is just as bad

Not to mention that this is all just a distraction from the very real destruction Trump 2.0 is doing to peoples' lives, safety, financial outlooks, rights, etc and flushing our country and planet down to the toilet for his benefit

*edited for clarity and fixed typos

• smegma2

  yesterday at 8:55 PM

  Yes, in 2020 Grindr was forced to sell for similar reasons.

  • LetsGetTechnicl

    yesterday at 10:57 PM

    Today I learned! I remember it being sold to a Chinese company a few years ago, didn’t know it went back to US ownership. Ironically just deleted it because even with an Adblocker it’s still unusable with all the bots

So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN. And now Ellison is going to take over TikTok.

Paramount(being run by Larry Ellison's son) is looking to install the pro-israel-propagandist who has variously masqueraded as a liberal, a conservative and anti-woke free-speech champion, Bari Weiss[1] as CBS's editor-in-chief or co-president[2]. It also bears mentioning that Ellison is a life-long zionist, friend of the IDF and close personal friend of Netanyahu to whom he even offered a post at Oracle.[3]

This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.

[1] - https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...

[2] - https://archive.is/20250916040811/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Ellison&old...

• spacechild1

  yesterday at 2:33 PM

  This is just crazy. No single person should have this amount of power, in particular if they have the moral integrity of Larry Ellison...

  • seemaze

    yesterday at 4:52 PM

    >moral integrity of Larry Ellison...

    Don't anthropomorphize Larry Ellison

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728

  • Retric

    yesterday at 4:39 PM

    It is two people here. David Ellison who took over Paramount is the son of Larry Ellison of Oracle.

    http://wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ellison

    • SSLy

      yesterday at 4:54 PM

      Durin I, Durin II…

  • yesterday at 4:56 PM

  • seizethecheese

    yesterday at 6:17 PM

    Genuine question: what do you think the alternative is? Ultimately someone will have the power. I don’t know what’s particularly questionable about Larry Ellison. An entrepreneur controlling media seems better than the state or a foreign government.

    • yoyohello13

      yesterday at 8:54 PM

      It less about who and more about how many. Lots of different people, with different points of view, sharing control of the media is way better than one guy having the ability to push whatever narrative they feel like at the time.

    • jimbokun

      yesterday at 6:21 PM

      Is Larry Ellison owning TikTok objectively better for US citizens than the current Chinese owners?

    • yesterday at 8:14 PM

• throwawayqqq11

  yesterday at 9:19 AM

  Thank you for providing the media take over angle. I wish the people down voting you would explain why.

  • Retric

    yesterday at 4:37 PM

    He’s got the wrong guy on the paramount deal. It’s David Ellison though they’re related:

    https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/paramount-warner-bros-disco...

    • jacobolus

      yesterday at 4:43 PM

      David Ellison is Larry Ellison's son, and Larry Ellison spent $6 billion on the Paramount deal. It's not really a stretch to imagine that the father might have some influence on the resulting operation. (According to a cursory web search, on paper Larry Ellison now has a 35.5% voting interest and David Ellison has a 64.5% voting interest.)

      • Retric

        yesterday at 5:07 PM

        I agree it’s not that big of a stretch, but it elevates the discussion when you communicate what part of your argument is objectively correct vs a stretch.

        My knee-jerk reaction was to upvote the comment, but that’s how Ecco chambers get increasingly divorced from reality.

  • vincnetas

    yesterday at 4:02 PM

    how do you know if anyone is downvoting a comment?

    • dfxm12

      yesterday at 4:09 PM

      The text gets lighter in color and harder to read. People may come later and vote for it, darkening the text again.

    • dijit

      yesterday at 4:06 PM

      [flagged]

      • 6510

        yesterday at 4:17 PM

        [flagged]

        • dijit

          yesterday at 4:20 PM

          [flagged]

          • dns_snek

            yesterday at 4:36 PM

            I don't believe for a second that you're being downvoted by someone with multiple accounts. You're being downvoted because you tried to frame a lukewarm observation (that brought receipts!) as some insane conspiratorial hot take in a really transparent manner, while simultaneously misrepresenting it (zionists vs jews) and ridiculing it (flat earth comparison).

            • dijit

              yesterday at 4:48 PM

              [flagged]

  • ta1243

    yesterday at 6:02 PM

    [flagged]

  • schnable

    yesterday at 6:02 PM

    [flagged]

    • cheraderama

      yesterday at 6:45 PM

      https://fixupx.com/infolibnews/status/1968177947724198243?s=...

  • dijit

    yesterday at 4:04 PM

    [flagged]

    • mysecretaccount

      yesterday at 4:12 PM

      Enough with the tone policing. The original comment is accurate: Paramount seeks to install Zionist Bari Weiss. This is uncontroversially true.

      • dijit

        yesterday at 4:14 PM

        [flagged]

    • dfxm12

      yesterday at 4:07 PM

      Can you explain the conspiracy?

      • dijit

        yesterday at 4:11 PM

        [flagged]

        • 6510

          yesterday at 4:15 PM

          [flagged]

    • churchill

      yesterday at 4:22 PM

      We're no longer accepting this tripe as sane discourse. Anyone of sound mind has seen, over the past 3 years, that Israel's securocrats and Zionists in America and Europe shut down any views that's remotely critical of Israel by influencing the media. It's also as clear as daylight that TikTok's problems started after they gave the world a window into Israel's atrocities in occupied Palestine. Ellison is a self-confessed Zionist.

      Whether it's Bari Weiss abetting genocide against Palestinians, Silicon Valley purging anyone who questions it, or actively building the weapons that enable it, you can't glue people's eyes shut or force them not to believe their lying eyes with cries of antisemitism, conspiracy, etc.

      • dijit

        yesterday at 4:26 PM

        mate.

        You cannot accept whatever you want

        personally, I think the whole “the Jews control the media” narrative is a bit, I don’t know, antisemetic?

        Any time I find myself thinking “the x, y” I find that its probably racist.

        “the muslims make child rape gangs”

        “the welsh shag sheep”

        “the blacks are fatherless”

        “the whites are culture-less”

        Grow up.

        • freejazz

          yesterday at 7:37 PM

          As a jew (it's a shame I need to admit this in order to get through your dishonest screening), he's talking about zionists, not jews.

          • dijit

            yesterday at 7:41 PM

            [flagged]

      • otterley

        yesterday at 4:58 PM

        [flagged]

• spookie

  yesterday at 6:28 PM

  To be completly frank, its better to focus on the media consolidation part. That's the real problem.

  • usefulcat

    yesterday at 7:28 PM

    Actually it's the opposite. Pre-internet, there were a handful of news sources in any given city (mostly newspapers and TV), so they couldn't afford to alienate half of their potential viewers/readers by leaning hard left or right.

    Today, there are many, many sources of 'news' online. So many that the net effect is that most of those sources lean one way or the other, and by and large people choose to listen mostly or only to those sources they agree with.

    No wonder political opinions are so highly divided today. Almost no one ever hears anything from the other side.

  • hvb2

    yesterday at 6:39 PM

    For a large share of the population social media is the only media they consume, so this is part of your real problem

• otterley

  yesterday at 4:44 PM

  "hostile take-over of the American mind"

  You mean, to support Israel? Is that what this is about?

  • ryeights

    today at 1:11 AM

    Partially, yes? I don’t see that as particularly controversial at this point. We are beyond consensus manufacturing and into explicit governmental crackdowns on anti-Israel voices in the US.

    • otterley

      today at 2:47 AM

      So if I say, here or anywhere, that I disagree with Israel’s actions related to Gaza, I should be afraid?

      Well, here I am. Come and get me.

  • JumpCrisscross

    yesterday at 5:46 PM

    > to support Israel? Is that what this is about?

    It’s for money and power. Because of the partisan nature of the power grab, a certain grab bag of evangelical, fossil fuel and anti-gay tenets are going to get reïnforced. But treating those as the cause dangerously misses that this is being started at home.

    • otterley

      yesterday at 5:56 PM

      I'd like to hear from the person I'm responding to, as it sounds an awful lot like a dog whistle.

    • andsoitis

      yesterday at 6:14 PM

      > anti-gay

      Larry Ellison’s daughter is gay. Why do you think her brother and father are going to infuse Paramount with anti-gay bigotry?

      • anon7000

        yesterday at 7:15 PM

        It's important to remember that the ultra-powerful and wealthy live whatever life they want to live regardless of what their media companies promote.

        Someone can own a media company, have it push very specific political ideologies with the goal of turning people against each other and gaining power for themselves. By pushing antagonistic media, they can prop up fringe political figures who'd be more willing to help them with their political goals. (E.g. tax policies that help the wealthy person's companies.)

        They can still live whatever life they want, even going against the ideologies the media companies espouse, because they're rich enough that the fallout doesn't impact them.

        They're living a very different kind of life than us.

        BTW, I'm not explicitly arguing that Larry Ellison is doing this -- I don't have the context or background on that. I am saying that his media companies will 1. do things to help Larry's interests (which are probably political), and 2. that doesn't have to be aligned with however he lives his personal life, since he's effectively immune.

      • JumpCrisscross

        yesterday at 7:02 PM

        > Larry Ellison’s daughter is gay. Why do you think her brother and father are going to infuse Paramount with anti-gay bigotry?

        Sorry, I'm speaking generally. The people in power broadly align with these policies. That means that when they gain control over a pillar of industry, they're broadly going to do influence it to some combination of those ends. The reason they gained power isn't to do those things. Ellison isn't taking control of TikTok to influence the Israel narrative. But when he takes control of it, as a result of the contours of powers that are MAGA, he will probably be forced to put forward an anti-Palestinian editorial bias.

        There is a lot of tail wagging the dog conspiracy in this thread. I'm pushing back on that.

        • big_youth

          yesterday at 10:34 PM

          Current Oracle CEO Safra Catz lives in Palm Beach and is a frequent visitor to Mar-a-lago. She is actually a big Israel supporter, visiting and donating money often.

          • otterley

            today at 2:25 AM

            So what?

• palmotea

  yesterday at 3:58 PM

  > So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN.

  That's not Larry Ellison, it's his nepo baby David Ellison.

• thesmtsolver

  yesterday at 6:07 PM

  Trying to be neutral. Did we consider China's relationship with Palestine? Were we ok with American minds being swayed by a foreign country?

  • farseer

    yesterday at 6:29 PM

    That is one of the prime reasons congress banned TikTok.

  • netsharc

    yesterday at 6:41 PM

    If we want neutral, how about a fair arena for opinions and ideas.. at the moment "The Right" yells and screams "Anti-Semite! Terrorist!" if someone protests against the starvation and slaughter of children... So having them control the medium doesn't feel right for me.

    Ok someone's going to come and say that "The Left" controlled the medium and disallowed "non-mainstream" messaging about Covid... I admit my bias and consider such messaging lunacy too..

• hn_throw_250915

  yesterday at 7:07 PM

  Larry the lawnmower Ellison?

• tinyhouse

  yesterday at 6:34 PM

  What's the problem with being pro-israel? Everyone needs to be pro-whatever-you-prefer? I'm pro-israel too.

  • JumpCrisscross

    yesterday at 7:08 PM

    > What's the problem with being pro-israel?

    There are tiny pockets of this country that assume this is the singular issue that animates everybody, every day, and that it is impossible to believe in both Israel's right to exist and defend itself and the Palestinians' right to not be bombed because the Israeli PM doesn't want to go to jail.

  • cheraderama

    yesterday at 6:50 PM

    What's the problem with being antisemitic? Everyone needs to be anti-whatever-you-prefer?

    • tinyhouse

      yesterday at 6:54 PM

      The problem is the word 'anti'. Being pro something doesn't mean you're anti something else. I can be pro-israel and still have sympathy for the Palestinians and what they are enduring and hoping for peace.

      • guizadillas

        yesterday at 7:11 PM

        Well I'm pro anti-israel

  • Imustaskforhelp

    yesterday at 6:56 PM

    The problem is that the pro stands from problem.

    Whenever we take a stance, We identify our ego with that stance. We shall die but die a pro X or pro Y

    As such many debates happen in bad faith as well.

    Of course everyone has their agenda but one has to understand that agenda is just a framework for understanding the world.

    And we need to understand the world because it has no inherent meaning.

    So like, if we really have to deduce meaning, if we really have to be pro something that we can die on a hill towards, I'd rather have it be a humanitarian thing.

    I am not saying that palestine is good either but rather that in genocide/wars, the people fighting the war/military/families displaced suffer, not the old man causing the war.

    I feel like I am a humanist. Wishing to understand the world, yet I feel like some people in this world have hurt me so much that sometimes I just wish the world to burn.

    I am sure that people are gonna comment on something like "oh do you support a genocide etc."

    But I am trying to make the point that the world should really be just anti suffering,accepting. Yes I am naive but surely with all of this technological improvements, we can improve the structure of society to not be fucking brewing with hate and bullying and resentment.

    We can do so much better as a society without even trying much. Just small acts of kindness and basically creating a environment that rewards it and punishes bullying/hate speech etc. might be really nice if I am being honest.

    Not sure why we can't be pro this instead of defining ourselves with the confict of two other foreign nations

    • tinyhouse

      yesterday at 7:27 PM

      I think it stems from being a selfish species. All our life we pick sides - a sport team, university, town, etc.

• nineplay

  yesterday at 4:24 PM

  > This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.

  Again? People should be talking about the hostile take-over currently in progress and how it is getting exponentially worse. But the billionaire mouthpieces gave everyone a shiny new inconsequential talking point and no one cares about anything that matters.

  • Imustaskforhelp

    yesterday at 7:01 PM

    > No one cares about anything that matters.

    Maybe that's what they wanted all along.

    Why fight a war against class, against oppression when we can sit on a chair and write a comment either defending or arguing against something as petty as religion.

    It would be maybe the 3rd point worth discussing definitely after concentration of power & how they can influence our opinion of the masses.

    But people made it the first.

    There is no such thing as a moral billionaire imo, I saw a video like this and I sorta agree.

    I wouldn't be comfortable with anyone owning this much amount of control.

    Religion seems so petty to me yet it seems that the world is coming back to it. Fighting us vs them.

    We have all forgotten what the people in 1970's esque dreamed of 2025 etc. (I am a genz but I have seen such videos of people thinking what)

    And the funny thing is, is that we ourselves have forgotten how to dream of what will happen in 2100

    Do we really want to grow old in society where even after 70-80 years, one of our children or grandchildren sees yet again some comment like this and writes something like this that I am writing?

    I feel a little frustrated.

• JumpCrisscross

  yesterday at 5:44 PM

  > hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man

  Ellison read and responded to the political situation more skilfully than Elon.

  He used Stargate to cement himself as a power broker in AI. He used that influence to provide antitrust assurances that gave his son a leg up for Paramount. Meanwhile he used that proximity to media to get a foot in the door with TikTok.

  The root cause is the partisan politicisation of the economy. This is a project all the major Trump donors and high-level supporters contributed to. That Ellison is coming up as one of the new aristocrats is closer to a dice roll; that we have oligarchs, now, is very much by design.

  • wnc3141

    yesterday at 6:04 PM

    In authoritarian regimes the industrial capacity of an economy is appropriated by the state, where the fruits of the industry are enjoyed by party loyalists.

    In this case using the state to choose which business is viable, no doubt being businesses that play ball with the party.

    -its why sectarian conflicts and power delegation is so high stakes in many parts of the world.

  • andrekandre

    yesterday at 11:15 PM

      > The root cause is the partisan politicisation of the economy.
    

    well, tbf in the old days, it was literally called ‘political economy’ for a reason… maybe the name should make a comeback.

• schnable

  yesterday at 5:56 PM

  [flagged]

  • jimbokun

    yesterday at 6:21 PM

    He (or she) lists several other characteristics of these people as well.

  • acdha

    yesterday at 6:11 PM

    Ignoring the genocide topic for the moment, it’s relevant from a speech perspective: that’s an alliance of hard-right groups who have spent the last year conflating criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and trying to shut down voices which disagree with them (e.g. cuts to research grants based on unrelated actions on campus). Consolidating a large chunk of the information space under a unified group opposed to free speech should concern all of us.

    • bananalychee

      yesterday at 6:26 PM

      Your post is fair, but it's not how I read the OP, which seems less concerned with consolidation of power than with people supportive of Israel having power. And while I appreciate that criticism of Israel is not anti-semitism, believing that Israel is a legitimate state that has the right to self-defense is all it takes to be labelled as a "Zionist", and at that point it's practically a euphemism for "Jew". I'm not familiar enough with Bari Weiss's views to tell if that's what's being done here, but the use of a pejorative without clarification, combined with the fixation on "Zionists" and the implication that their intent surely must be to issue pro-Israel propaganda in particular makes it sound a lot like old-school anti-semitism.

      • PhantomHour

        yesterday at 7:22 PM

        The wider context here is that the TikTok ban had significant support on the grounds of, what politicians and Zionist lobbying groups called, "anti-Israel bias" and "support for Hamas". Not just the explicitly stated "China Bad" motivations.

        https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-ban-israel-... (Note: Article from November 2023)

        The opposition to TikTok on grounds of it's Chinese ownership had been on a slow burn right up to October 2023, when it picked up steam in the wake of the early response to the Gaza War. US politicians were furious that the youth weren't buying the Bipartisan Approved Position(TM) on Israel.

        Considering that major world organisations, even holocaust remembrance ones, are now calling Israel's actions genocide, that fury has aged like the finest bottle of raw milk.

        Hence:

        > and the implication that their intent surely must be to issue pro-Israel propaganda

        That is indeed the implication made, for the reasons above, I don't think it is unwarranted.

      • acdha

        yesterday at 6:32 PM

        That’s fair, I can’t say I know their inner thoughts either. Personally I’m concerned about the political unity and lack of respect for other people’s freedom of speech. We’re healthier with a robust public debate.

      • yesterday at 6:38 PM

      • 93po

        yesterday at 7:05 PM

        I sympathize with the sensitivity of the topic and what dog-whistling can look like. However, we're discussing media that people consume and the control that people have over that media. One of the most critical topics being controlled by media right now is the genocide in Gaza. And we're looking at a large section of media, including TikTok, being controlled by someone who not only denies that a genocide is happening, but is also complicit in it with their military contracts with Israel.

        I think this is all relevant to the topic at hand.

        • bananalychee

          yesterday at 7:35 PM

          I'm sympathetic to your argument, because you set explicit boundaries on the issue of concern, and you mention military contracts with concretely align Oracle with Israeli interests. It takes very selective reading between the lines to interpret the OP this charitably, when a direct interpretation reads more like "Jews who sympathize with Israel shouldn't own media platforms, because they will use them for propaganda." Which is maybe four words distanced from last-century anti-semitism.

          I will add that TikTok is already being measurably manipulated, which everyone seems to be glossing over, perhaps because the bias runs in the "right" direction.

    • tinyhouse

      yesterday at 6:37 PM

      What the other side is doing exactly? They try to ban every Israeli, including composers, athletes, scientists etc. It's much worse in my opnion.

  • yesterday at 6:32 PM

  • tootie

    yesterday at 6:15 PM

    [flagged]

    • cjbgkagh

      yesterday at 6:27 PM

      Only boomers in the US right wing have a net favorable view of Israel and it seems to me a lot of that is driven by contrarianism in response to the Left. The left hate it to therefore I must like it… that and the evangelicals. As the genocide drags on I think it’s putting many boomers off and more up to date polling may find that Israel is underwater there too. That would only leave the right wing leadership being net pro Israel which simply highlights the disconnect between politicians and the people that vote for them.

      I’m pretty sure buying media companies like this is an attempt to stop the bleeding.

      • JumpCrisscross

        yesterday at 7:06 PM

        > Only boomers in the US right wing have a net favorable view of Israel

        One, source? Because it's broader than that.

        Two, you're measuing sign but not magnitude. A majority of Americans now have a negative view of Israel. A vast majority of Americans are unwilling to prioritise this issue in elections. (To the degree there are folks willing to do so, they're in deep-blue cities. Their power is in Democrat primaries. Not in general elections, and certainly not over the GOP.)

        • cjbgkagh

          yesterday at 7:33 PM

          https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/08/how-ameri...

          Republicans aged 19-49 have are split 50-50 on Israel with a strong and clear trend in the negative direction. That only leaves 50+ Republicans, sure a stretch of 'boomer' to include 50-61 in that but that only means it'll take a bit longer for the 50-61 cohort to hit net negative.

          This isn't a problem for Israel now but I believe it's existential for them in the future.

          • JumpCrisscross

            yesterday at 8:47 PM

            Thank you for the source.

            > isn't a problem for Israel now but I believe it's existential for them in the future

            "A slight majority of Americans (53%) now express[ing] a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Israel" is new, but given "the share of U.S. adults who voice very unfavorable views of Israel" is only "19% in 2025" (up from "10% in 2022"), it's not fair to call the threat existential. If that latter rises into the 30s, one could expect the American-Israeli alliance to start fracturing.

            (Given the size of Israel's economy and potency of its military, it's also naïve to assume it couldn't replace America as a security partner. What it probably couldn't get from its new friends would be as favourable, deferential terms.)

            • cjbgkagh

              yesterday at 9:27 PM

              It's a bit weird to say Israel could replace the US as a security partner without giving an example of who that would be. Russia? China? The EU? And what money are they to buy the materials with, their own? American? Who would continue to bribe their neighbors they're not at war with and restrain those they are at war with. What if Iran really does get nukes, what if a 3rd country gives them one.

              Currently the Americans are trying to figure out how much sovereignty they really have and are discovering that it's indeed effectively none. What do you think that does to a population, especially during a sustained economic recession, where the fed is dropping interest rates, while stocks are at all time highs. It seems like the only thing Americans can agree on is that 'this cannot last', I don't know what'll replace it but there is a reasonably good chance it won't be good for Israel.

              • JumpCrisscross

                yesterday at 9:56 PM

                > weird to say Israel could replace the US as a security partner without giving an example of who that would be. Russia? China?

                China, Russia and India come to mind. (The latter two need Israeli weapons expertise and are transactional about their geopolitics. The last is in the growing throes of anti-Muslim ethnonationalism. The first and third import energy.)

                > what money are they to buy the materials with, their own?

                Yes. Amercan aid to Israel is less than 1% of its GDP [1][2]. We buy influence with that money, but it's not existential.

                > What if Iran really does get nukes, what if a 3rd country gives them one

                ...Israel already has nukes and superior delivery mechanisms to Iran. Also, if Iran gets nukes, I put Israel becoming a regional hegemon protecting the Gulf from a nuclear Iran on the board.

                > Americans are trying to figure out how much sovereignty they really have and are discovering that it's indeed effectively none

                This is dumb. America's Israel policy until about 2025 has been broadly popular with the electorate. (Israel could have become unpopular earlier, but nobody particularly likes folks occupying universities and blocking bridges.)

                [1] https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts

                [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Israel

                • cjbgkagh

                  yesterday at 10:28 PM

                  With regards to sovereignty I was referring to US foreign policy, not dealing with annoying libs. Right now the struggle is between the Restrainers and the Primacists to decide if a war with China should be preceded by a war with Iran. Israel is pushing for the war with Iran because it wants to be the local hegemony. No American gets to vote on this and those who thought they were voting against it actually voted for the person most likely to enable it. Hence zero sovereignty, well maybe that’s negative sovereignty.

                  1% is absolutely huge with regards to a GDP (money spent). Also that’s not all inclusive, you need to throw in all the other money the US spends on the Middle East.

                  I’m unlikely to change anyone’s mind on this, but I generally am interested in exploring the bounds of others. Unless you have something new and interesting to share I think we’re done here.

                  • JumpCrisscross

                    today at 1:01 AM

                    > No American gets to vote on this and those who thought they were voting against it actually voted for the person most likely to enable it. Hence zero sovereignty

                    You're mixing up sovereignty with direct democracy.

                    We're a republic. We have total sovereignty when it comes to geopolitics. None of that requires Americans voting on foreign policy issues, which in reality, given even informed Americans' international literacy, would be horrific.

                    > 1% is absolutely huge with regards to a GDP (money spent)

                    But easy enough to replace, even solely with domestic resources.

                    > you need to throw in all the other money the US spends on the Middle East

                    This is nonsense. One, we're not abandoning the Gulf for a variety of financial and geostrategic reasons. Two, even if we do, that's an opportunity for Israel as an emerging regional hegemonic.

                    > I’m unlikely to change anyone’s mind on this

                    Wouldn't have expected otherwise. These discussions can still be interesting for us, as you mentioned, and for others.

                    • cjbgkagh

                      today at 1:49 AM

                      I know Israel sees its future as a regional, and perhaps global, kingmaker. The fulcrum upon which the multipolar world balances and that this is an attractive proposition to them. But it’ll be entering into a world with a combination of circumstances that have never happened before, which I think is one hell of a risk, a risk that has a good chance of ending disastrously for them, let alone the rest of the world. And what should happen to them if they fail.

                      It’ll be like singing ‘we’ll be home by Christmas,’ or ‘King Cotton,’ often many of the assumptions that underpin these beliefs do not pan out. I guess it’s now ‘free beachside real estate.’

  • loverofhumanz

    yesterday at 6:06 PM

    [flagged]

    • cjbgkagh

      yesterday at 6:29 PM

      The most complicated thing about Bari Weiss, who lost in a battle of wits against Joe Rogan (a rather low bar), is how she continues to fail upwards.

      • efavdb

        yesterday at 6:37 PM

        Fail upwards? She started a successful business and sold for a large value.

        • cjbgkagh

          yesterday at 6:45 PM

          Not sure if that counts if it’s part of all the same influence project.

  • ch4s3

    yesterday at 6:12 PM

    [flagged]

    • thinkingtoilet

      yesterday at 6:15 PM

      Or perhaps they're not thrilled with tens of thousands of innocent people being killed in Gaza as well as the ongoing effort to starve the populace. Baseless accusations of antisemitism don't work any more and dramatically reduce support for Israel in the long run.

      • bananalychee

        yesterday at 6:36 PM

        I suppose when such accusations are not present, we can always hallucinate them. :)

        • ch4s3

          yesterday at 6:50 PM

          I carefully reread my comment and did not find that accusation. But it is clear that the OP has very limited interests that are probably a better fit in other discussion forms.

          • thinkingtoilet

            yesterday at 9:03 PM

            You said conspiracies always land on one place, which clearly implied blaming "the jews". There is no point in debating people like you but I will reiterate a point you should care deeply about. Israel, right or wrong, is losing massive support among the younger generations world wide. And pretending they aren't massacring civilians and intentionally starving them only weakens Israel in the long run. So keep it up, you are actively eroding future support.

  • fluidcruft

    yesterday at 6:33 PM

    [flagged]

    • slg

      yesterday at 6:51 PM

      Ellison claims his Zionism is disconnected from his mother being Jewish. He has also distanced himself from his Judaism. It is also worth noting that more American Zionists are Evangelicals than Jews. Last I saw, Netanyahu has a higher approval rating among American Evangelicals than he has in his own country. This issue is very much Zionists vs anti-Zionists. Attempts to frame it as Jews vs non-Jews is just a different flavor of anti-Semitism.

      • lr4444lr

        yesterday at 6:55 PM

        Thank you for saying this. The American Christian Right's staunch pro-Israel voting bloc is way underappreciated by most critics of the lobby money. These people are legion, and would not vote against Israel if you paid them: it's part of their Christian messianic religion that the Jews be in the Holy Land.

        • fluidcruft

          yesterday at 7:09 PM

          If the American Christian Right were purchasing TikTok, then it might be relevant to a discussion about the purchase of TikTok. Instead we have... this whole subthread of pointless crap and justifications for the pointless crap.

          • slg

            yesterday at 7:19 PM

            The original complaint here is that American Zionists are purchasing TikTok. The point being discussed in this subthread is that American Zionism is more in line with the American Right than American Jews. Therefore the relevant trait of the purchasers being criticized is their right wing ideology and not their religion.

      • cjbgkagh

        yesterday at 6:54 PM

        I’m pretty sure the conflation has entered US law at the state level in most states. Not sure where it’s at the US federal level but it’s either conflated there as well or it is about to be.

    • yesterday at 6:45 PM

    • bananalychee

      yesterday at 6:42 PM

      [flagged]

      • stouset

        yesterday at 9:09 PM

        On the flip side, I see very little actual hatred of Jews, either cultural or religious, but I do see a lot of people claiming that any kind of opposition to the IDF flattening Gaza is equivalent to Jew hatred.

  • Cyph0n

    yesterday at 6:14 PM

    Because there is an ongoing genocide being perpetrated by Israel?

    For instance, would it be strange to dig into the ideological and personal ties of a businessman to South Africa at the height of apartheid? Or is it only strange when it has to do with Israel?

  • jalapenod

    yesterday at 7:04 PM

    Quickest way to know who’s a traitor.

  • cultofmetatron

    yesterday at 6:50 PM

    I'm gonna go on a limb and guess that since its a social media platform where people have been widely protesting a zionist led genocide by a Israel. the fact that the investor is a zionist and Israel supporter is probably very relevant.

    more or less akin to a coal miner operator taking control over the EPA even.

    • JumpCrisscross

      yesterday at 7:04 PM

      > the fact that the investor is a zionist and Israel supporter is probably very relevant

      To that issue, sure. What's being missed is that any buyer Trump signed off on would need to align with his views.

      • stouset

        yesterday at 7:11 PM

        This is literally the entire issue behind why people think things like this are a bad idea.

      • yibg

        yesterday at 8:22 PM

        I don't think it was missed. It was just so obvious that it didn't need to be called out explicitly.

        • JumpCrisscross

          yesterday at 9:22 PM

          It’s absolutely being missed. The cause isn’t the Israeli sympathy. That’s an effect of the party pushing to put American media under the thumb of the President. (Ironically, by a President who was helped to his position by TikTok.)

          There is a lot of tail wagging the dog conspiracy in this thread. It dangerously reverses causation.

          • sporkxrocket

            yesterday at 9:27 PM

            A16z and many other Zionists were pushing hard for this ban under Biden. Trump is doing their bidding, not the other way around. You can look up their X posts about it.

      • freejazz

        yesterday at 7:38 PM

        No one missed that.

• vFunct

  yesterday at 4:11 PM

  [flagged]

  • nwah1

    yesterday at 4:58 PM

    This kind of hyperbole is both ridiculous and offensive.

    • dttze

      yesterday at 5:15 PM

      [dead]

  • otterley

    yesterday at 4:45 PM

    Racism isn't welcome here. Please take it elsewhere.

    • vFunct

      yesterday at 9:02 PM

      Can HN do something to ban all the raging genocidal Zionists on this site?

      Seriously, they are insufferable.

      • otterley

        yesterday at 9:39 PM

        You should be emailing the staff with that request, not complaining in a thread. You should also include your evidence.

        • vFunct

          yesterday at 10:06 PM

          They read these threads just fine. I don't recommend emailing since that loses context. Additionally, it makes other people aware of the problem.

          • otterley

            yesterday at 10:52 PM

            Alright, then, why don't you cite the relevant "raging genocidal Zionist" posts and comments here?

            • vFunct

              yesterday at 11:35 PM

              It's right there in what you wrote. It's why you got downvoted.

              • otterley

                today at 1:19 AM

                Are you calling me a genocidal Zionist? Yes or no, and on what, precisely, is your conclusion based?

                And what other posts and comments are you referring to in your complaint?

              • today at 1:18 AM

• hereme888

  yesterday at 6:22 PM

  [flagged]

• redwood

  yesterday at 6:03 PM

  [flagged]

• ecshafer

  yesterday at 6:22 PM

  [flagged]

  • TSiege

    yesterday at 6:28 PM

    Is the argument that the Larry Ellison doesn't have huge sway over the companies he's owns outright or in part, or that saying him and Elon Musk have outsized control over America's information environment is conspiratorial? Either seem laughably wrong since these things are all public information

    • ecshafer

      yesterday at 7:43 PM

      The argument is that adding "zionist" multiple times was an irrelevant and conspiracy theorist laden addition.

  • tensor

    yesterday at 6:24 PM

    The consolidation of US media under a small number of right wing owners is an easily verifiable fact, not some conspiracy. Also, it's bad. Free markets need diversity, both in products AND in ideas.

• coffeebeqn

  yesterday at 4:01 PM

  Oligarchs be oligarching

• paxys

  yesterday at 4:44 PM

  Nothing hostile about it. This is what the American people voted for.

  • slg

    yesterday at 4:48 PM

    In 2020, 22.4% of the US population voted for Trump. In 2024, 22.7% of the population voted for Trump. I hate how people draw drastic conclusions regarding what the American people want based off the shift of less than half a percentage point of the population.

    • misnome

      yesterday at 5:57 PM

      Everyone who chooses not to vote is voting “I don’t care” and so voted for whoever won.

      • djeastm

        yesterday at 6:37 PM

        I don't think that necessarily follows. An abstention is a voting choice that doesn't imply support for one choice or another in the minds of the voter, regardless of the result.

        • asdff

          yesterday at 10:18 PM

          Abstention is not that, it is saying you are comfortable letting others choose for you. You have to consider the end result of the action not the intention of the action to understand what the choice really means.

      • slg

        yesterday at 6:53 PM

        Everyone who chooses not to vote is voting “I don’t like any candidate” and so voted against all candidates. How is your interpretation more valid than mine?

        • asdff

          yesterday at 10:17 PM

          You aren't voting against anyone. You either vote for someone or you take yourself and your vote out of the picture and ceed political control to more passionate people. That is what they are doing, "I will let the most passionate people choose our leader and I stand by their choice" not "I don't like anyone."

          • slg

            today at 2:23 AM

            How can you possibly feel comfortable ascribing a motive to over a hundred million people? You didn't answer the question on why this interpretation is more valid than mine.

        • Imustaskforhelp

          yesterday at 7:08 PM

          This.

          Idk about america, but there's definitely a sentiment echoing I feel like all across the world that there is a concentration of power and the divide between state and class is shrinking and we consider state to be itself (corrupt?) / not working to our wants.

          That's my understanding of it. People have given up hope on...well having hope.

          But hey lets define what is a woman first, that matters more than people sadly suiciding because they can't take this cruel petty world anymore.

          We have induced our cruelness on earth, every animal,tree, air, even other humans. Who have we left?

          Have we forgotten humanity? What does humanity even mean when we realize that people literally eat animals which scream to death from pain for the "taste" ?

          I myself ate an egg yesterday for "protein" after a few years, I am skinny so I had to convince myself that I needed it but still my heart felt a bit bitter.

          I am not judging you if you eat meat, that's not the point because I don't have a point/agenda. I am venting.You almost feel small when you think about it.

          I really feel like the world can be a better place so there's hope tho.

      • yesterday at 6:25 PM

  • yesterday at 4:46 PM

Why would any company want to operate in America, sell to Americans or onboard American users anymore?

If you're not successful you just wasted a ton of time and money.

If you are successful the newUSA will force you to divest what you've build against your will.

Doesn't sound like a country worth investing in anymore.

• f33d5173

  yesterday at 7:56 PM

  > If you are successful the newUSA will force you to divest what you've build against your will.

  You still make money in that case. It isn't a bad deal for the chinese. The americans who now have yet another censored app controlled by the american government are the only losers here.

• bluecalm

  yesterday at 12:02 PM

  Because it's the biggest market. Half of my customers are American. I have never even marketed anything to them. It's the biggest, best market with the most people willing to spend the most money.

  • TMWNN

    yesterday at 5:11 PM

    Similarly, when the Trump administration came close to forcing a divestment/shutdown on TikTok in 2020, Americans were 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue. Of the top 50 most-followed accounts <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...>, 21 of 49 (not including TikTok itself) are American.

• kcb

  yesterday at 9:39 PM

  Americans are good at spending money.

• asdff

  yesterday at 10:19 PM

  Anything to get a suckle at the teet that is the fed money printing machine.

• TMWNN

  yesterday at 5:10 PM

  >If you are successful the newUSA will force you to divest what you've build against your will.

  Besides what bluecalm said, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place.

  Conversely, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, American would not have to fear a hostile Chinese government silently gathering data on American users, or a company repeatedly shown to be lying about using its app to do so.

Oracle is just really going wild to get into the media and social media spaces.

• gtk40

  yesterday at 6:01 PM

  Reminds me of when Cisco bought Flip Video

if the algorthm server isn't in the US, it's pretty useless.

So finally all that pesky people saying that their own government is funding a brutal genocide with their tax dollars will be banned.

American media is one of the most thightly controlled and censored in the world. They need to carefully control the media to maintain the ilusion of "moral superiority" that is used to justify foreign interventions.

• camdroidw

  yesterday at 10:04 AM

  [dead]

The party of laissez-faire capitalism is now into "let's interfere", with government ownership, presence within companies and of course, dropping the hammer on "unpatriotic" speech, a kind of Amended First Amendment.

10 Small Steps: Executing the Fascist Playbook [0]

The Fascists’ Playbook [1]

[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/10-small-steps-executing-the-...

[1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/05/08/the-fascists-playboo...

• Vegenoid

  yesterday at 6:29 PM

  You can’t call them fascists - that’s dangerous, illegal rhetoric that incites violence.

Sorry for the silly question: is the US geofenced from the global tiktok?

• gpt5

  today at 12:33 AM

  They will be on the app, and the app will also be removed from the app store/play marketplace.

  I don't know whether they'll be blocked on the web.

This seems like a premature reaction. The Trump administration has been known to anchor to extreme positions as a negotiation tactic.

Given the complexity of forced platform migrations (user data transfer, algorithm preservation, creator monetization continuity), and the technical/legal hurdles involved, I suspect we're seeing opening moves in a broader negotiation rather than a final outcome.

Let's all be patient and wait to see how this plays out before assuming users will actually have to migrate to a completely new app with new ownership.

• wbl

  yesterday at 6:09 PM

  The thing is there is a law directing that TikTok be sold or shut down. Trump has already illegally given extensions several times.

Just don't use it.

Regardless of who is in control, Tiktok is basically an app designed by some of the smartest minds in the world to get you addicted. I already observed the brainrot similar apps caused to my parents, and for hell I won't allow my kid to touch it whenever I have control.

Whether you "learned" anything from it is irrelevant too -- you can always learn better with books, classes, and heck even YouTube videos are better sources of knowledge these days.

• estearum

  yesterday at 6:06 PM

  Obviously someone not using it themselves mitigates only a fraction of the harm of these things.

  If everyone around your kids is brainrotted or subject to destructive propaganda, your kids suffer too.

  • amatecha

    yesterday at 7:21 PM

    So, same old, basically. When I was a kid it was the same thing, kids spending all evening watching sitcoms and otherwise-trash TV. I was online on my computer learning programming, audio production, trying different operating systems, playing every game I could get my hands on, as well as chatting with people all over the world & making friends who I'm still friends with today, ingesting media from all over the world as well, completely free of corp/govt propaganda. Kids can still do so, if they choose to skip past the pop culture garbage that is shoved in everyone's faces, just as I did 20-30 years ago.

    Like, yeah, it does suck when everyone around you lazily envelops themselves in inane crap. Isn't that just the norm (sad as it is)? I mean, it's a bit worse now that everyone has a propaganda/influence factory in their pocket and they are incentivized to spend untold amounts of time on it, but the same counter-culture mindset that led me to disregard what society was attempting to coerce me into is a mindset that can surely be instilled/reinforced in kids today. I hope >_>

    • estearum

      yesterday at 8:37 PM

      "Someone said something else was bad and it wasn't, so therefore anything else that someone says is bad is also not bad" is an obviously incoherent argument once you strip it down to its basics.

      • amatecha

        yesterday at 9:16 PM

        Yeah no I get what you mean, but my argument is like, you should try to be resilient against the arbitrary whims of the powers that be regardless of what their flavour of the week is. Asymmetric power/influence is a dynamic that will always exist in society, especially exacerbated by the scale and reach we see today.

        • estearum

          yesterday at 10:43 PM

          Absolutely! But one of the tools we created to make this possible is government. There are forces (like multinational corporations) that exceed the power of an individual or many individuals to mitigate.

          Social media is a far more “effective” technology than TV was, which was more effective than radio before it, and so on. It’s very important we figure out how to counteract these things because the trend is obviously in one direction, which is not the one that culminates in individuals having full, conscious agency over their lives and wellbeing.

          • amatecha

            yesterday at 11:45 PM

            Ah totally, I exclaim frequently that there should be government-backed open source and decentralized software[0], putting power of technology into the hands of everyone (rather than letting this power get consolidated into monopolistic corporations) ... but then, what we seem to have currently is a huge correlation of motives between state and industry, and neither seem to have the incentive to put power in the hands of individuals. And individuals often don't even want it either. Either way though, yeah, regulation is long overdue for SO MUCH of this stuff.

            [0] luckily EU seems to be doing a lot more in that direction, e.g. https://commission.europa.eu/about/departments-and-executive...

  • ferguess_k

    yesterday at 8:30 PM

    Yeah, you are 100% correct. I need to find him a few good hobbies before I release him to the wolf packs.

    I don't know. I myself never sticked to a hobby even after trying a lot of them. Genetically speaking he is a lot like me -- lack of discipline, difficult to cool down, impatient, throw tantrums frequently, etc. The list is pretty long :/ Not many good things from this genetic pool TBH.

  • throwaway29812

    yesterday at 6:08 PM

    [dead]

• conductr

  yesterday at 7:39 PM

  I feel like short form video is inherently addictive, what special sauce are these smartest minds in the world using that adds to that?

  I've never used it, but since YouTube introduced Shorts I've become victim to the addiction and subsequently blocked any trace of Shorts with a browser extension.

  • ferguess_k

    yesterday at 8:24 PM

    I think the way they make recommendations are pretty good (looking over my wife's shoulder sometimes). But that's just my guess, I mean, it could just be pushing the next best viewed video from the same tag.

• thrance

  yesterday at 6:07 PM

  Just "not using it" doesn't ward off from the deleterious societal consequences of such a powerful propaganda tool simply existing.

  • ferguess_k

    yesterday at 8:23 PM

    It's the best I can do honestly. As another commentater mentioned, what can I do if my son's friends use it extensively? I don't know TBH -- the best I can do is to not give him a smart phone too early and try to grow him some other hobbies before brainrot reaches him.

• reaperducer

  yesterday at 6:19 PM

  Regardless of who is in control, Tiktok is basically an app designed by some of the smartest minds in the world to get you addicted.

  But… but… TokTok put full-page ads in all the big newspapers telling us that thanks to them, a yoga mom in Montana can now take her free-range artisanal oat milk candle-making side-hustle and turn it into a full-time job, paying just a little over minimum wage!

  Isn't that worth destroying the minds of millions of American children?

I swear I saw all these exact comments yesterday - why are they showing that they were posted 10 minutes ago?

• TSiege

  yesterday at 4:28 PM

  I believe the HN team is intentionally consolidating the thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45270431#45277295

• yesterday at 4:13 PM

>A new company will be created to operate TikTok, with U.S. investors holding a roughly 80% stake and Chinese shareholders owning the rest, the report said.

It would've been better for the mental health of our country if it had been banned (along with Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts).

• acheron

  last Tuesday at 9:47 PM

  The good news is, I can’t see “being owned by Oracle” as anything other than a death sentence.

  • SilverElfin

    last Tuesday at 10:17 PM

    I doubt it. Oracle has a booming datacenter and cloud business right now. Their role is to host the data in a US jurisdiction, which they can do. It won’t affect the success or failure of TikTok. And frankly it won’t give TikTok users privacy since the data can still be accessed by software written by Chinese employees.

    • bl4kers

      yesterday at 7:21 AM

      > since the data can still be accessed by software written by Chinese employees.

      Source?

    • archerx

      yesterday at 9:07 AM

      Yea, I’m sure the sociopaths at oracle have the fingers on the pulse of the younger generations. They’re just going to up the censorship and enshittfy it resulting in its users moving on the next new thing.

  • miohtama

    last Tuesday at 10:13 PM

    LawyerTok

One of the biggest grifts in history ...

So now we will split American TikTok users from those of the rest of the world? Madness.

I'm still trying to figure out if putting off the shutdown until they had a deal was even legal.

The Constitution has the worth of toilet paper if the executive can just keep saying "I don't want to enforce this law because my buddy here has a financial interest in that not happening as its supposed to", which is exactly what is happening given how close Larry and Trump are.

Sometimes I'm truly baffled over the stories that the HN readership ends up mostly ignoring. When I heard about this news elsewhere, I came here fully expecting this to be high on the front page with hundreds of comments discussing it. For comparison's sake, the story about Tiktok shutting down[1] and then restoring service[2] in the US each had over 2500 comments. Meanwhile, 3 hours after this story was posted, this is the 14th comment.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753396

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759336

• aurareturn

  yesterday at 1:04 PM

  My theory is that it highly depends on the few random people who view New posts and if they upvote/comment.

  The exact same post with the exact same title can either be completely ignored with no comments and no upvotes or be the top post with 500 upvotes and 300 comments.

  • morkalork

    yesterday at 2:40 PM

    Exactly. Depending on the traffic in newest, stories can slip in disappear in the flow

• dang

  yesterday at 3:54 PM

  There's too much randomness to expect any consistency.

  Sometimes we re-up things for that reason (basically the second-chance pool mechanism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). I've done that with this one.

• TillE

  yesterday at 12:58 AM

  Frustratingly I can't recall specific examples, but in the past year there have been several major discussion-worthy tech stories I've seen on The Verge or wherever, and I come to HN a couple hours later and there's either literally nothing or the post got zero interaction. Strange!

• ChrisArchitect

  yesterday at 1:31 AM

  Not really news in this state. Because other than a few more details here it's not any different than the story from last week (which we knew Oracle was in the mix etc). The deal isn't final.

  • slg

    yesterday at 3:19 AM

    It is funny to say this as if there was some past story on here that everyone saw. In the last month, the story about a potential TikTok deal with the most engagement maxed out at 3 comments and 17 points[1]. This is probably the most important news in the social media sphere since Musk bought Twitter and the HN audience doesn't care about it until contracts are signed? That's pretty unbelievable.

    [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45249430

  • metalman

    yesterday at 8:00 AM

    details, NO algorythm, Trumpy, China, Money, Twitteresque user base revolt....or worse so it's very much as you state, non final

There are so many comically evil villains in ths one deal.

Example: Silver Lake. Many younger HNers may not be that familira with the story of Skype. To summarize, Skype was a big deal, the first real mass market caller-to-caller Internet voice messaging services. It was founded in 2003, bought by eBay (of all people) in 2005 for several billion dollars. There were plans to spin it out on an IPO but Silver Lake led a buyout for less than eBay paid for it I believe in 2009 (~$2.75 billion).

Now in 2011, Microsoft bought it for ~$8.5 billion. That was great for the employees, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. I believe the new company was incorporated in the Cayman Islands to make it difficult to sue, a bunch of executives were fired before the buyout to avoid paying them out and, most controversially, the options had a clawback option that allowed Silver Lake to forcibly purchase options at the original rather than the buyout price [1].

Larry Ellison is more well known in HN circles as comically evil. Pretty much everything he touches leaves a Grand Moff Tarkin level of stench of evil from his attack on public access to Carbon Beach through his massive property portfolio to his more well known attacks on open source (originally as a threat to Oracle's dominance).

He is a Trump loyalist and true Putinesque oligarch who will probably amass levels of media control well beyond Rupert Murdoch's wildest dreams. You can bet your bottom dollar that every media property he touches will serve the administration and I'd be shocked if one or more of these deals doesn't directly enrich Trump and/or his family.

Welcome to the tleptocracy.

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2011/06/skype-silver-lake-evil/

[flagged]

• TheCraiggers

  yesterday at 7:19 PM

  It's rather amazing. They found one of the few organizations I trust less than the Chinese government to run this.

  • seanmcdirmid

    yesterday at 9:51 PM

    Ya, the only comparably worse choices would have been IBM or Salesforce. Also known as the toxic techs.

  • mandeepj

    yesterday at 7:34 PM

    > They found one of the few organizations

    Or, the Org found them! It helps to kiss the ring.

  • elzbardico

    yesterday at 7:22 PM

    Compared to Larry Ellison, Kim Jong-un strikes me as a supreme humanist, a beacon of goodness and generosity.

    • tanseydavid

      yesterday at 11:44 PM

      Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle. — Bryan Cantrill

    • tclancy

      yesterday at 8:30 PM

      Probably a better neighbor too.

    • geodel

      yesterday at 7:44 PM

      Indeed. And since you are so nice to Kim he can get a job as remote IT worker.

      • elzbardico

        yesterday at 8:27 PM

        Oh my. Forgot that nowadays people need to be explicitly warned about sarcasm or irony as they tend to interpret everything literally

        • decimalenough

          yesterday at 8:30 PM

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_remote_worker_sch...

    • FortuneIIIPick

      yesterday at 8:07 PM

      [flagged]

  • cm2187

    yesterday at 8:39 PM

    I don't think the average braindead tiktok user who watches choreographies all day long knows / cares / can even spell Oracle.

    I know what you will tell me: "but these people vote"... Hum, yes.

• afpx

  today at 1:28 AM

  It makes me uneasy to let a company that was literally named after a CIA program and given billions of dark money over the years selectively educate our next generation.

  Plus, Ellison on surveillance tech: "Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,”

  https://fortune.com/2024/09/17/oracle-larry-ellison-surveill...

• frogperson

  yesterday at 10:59 PM

  They clearly have a plan. Ellison gifted his son NBC or ABC or some large network recently, if I recall correctly.

  Why do they need to control the media?

  • peanuty1

    today at 12:26 AM

    To push a pro-Israel agenda. That's why Larry Ellison put Israeli loyalist Bari Weiss in charge of CBS.

• tracerbulletx

  yesterday at 7:23 PM

  Don't worry. His son is also odds on favorite to own half of the US broadcast, film, and streaming media via Paramount, CBS and are in talks to purchase Warner Brothers, HBO, Discovery, and all their other cable brands. Oh wait, maybe we should worry about that a little.

  • elzbardico

    yesterday at 7:26 PM

    The delightful world of democracy and free enterprise!

    • hopelite

      yesterday at 9:11 PM

      You are free to choose among the things the options the cabal provides you. What are you complaining about?

      • bionsystem

        yesterday at 10:02 PM

        Free to chose which pedophile you prefer.

• jm4

  yesterday at 10:59 PM

  I wonder if the license fee will be based on the number of followers. I hope it’s based on real engagement. I don’t want to pay just because a bunch of bots are following me. /s

• andsoitis

  yesterday at 7:33 PM

  Link?

  • CityOfThrowaway

    yesterday at 7:37 PM

    It's sarcasm

    • UncleOxidant

      yesterday at 9:26 PM

      We hope it's not predictive sarcasm.

      • dylan604

        yesterday at 9:48 PM

        Idiocracy was too

The most terrifying thing is there will be a trump-government representative in the governing body.

We are truly looking at 1984 as a blueprint not a warning.

• ta1243

  yesterday at 6:06 PM

  Political officers on ships was quite normal in the cold war, makes sense to have political officers in companies too.

• adastra22

  yesterday at 4:42 AM

  You can just not use TikTok.

  • OKRainbowKid

    yesterday at 8:16 AM

    That doesn't diminish the impact it has on the rest of humanity, and by proxy, on me.

    • andsoitis

      yesterday at 2:58 PM

      Wouldn't it be better if fewer people used TikTok, given negative impact of social media on individuals and society?

      Wouldn't it be better if these investors lose money on this investment?

      • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2

        yesterday at 4:11 PM

        Depends. Better as a word is a little too wide to interpret accurately without some additional information to go on. For example, if you look at my post history, you will know that I am not too keen on social media in general. From that perspective, it could be interpreted as a win. And yet, I think most of us here recognize the development as a whole is not 'good' ( since we are going with generic, not-easily-defined verbiage ).

      • mrbombastic

        yesterday at 4:05 PM

        Yes but how likely do you think it is that that will happen?

  • cookiengineer

    yesterday at 8:56 PM

    The problem with that rhetoric is that at some point you need social media to prove legitimacy of your identity.

    It already happens at border controls and TSA checks.

    Guess when that "you can just not use TikTok" argument will expand to "you can just not use the internet" and effectively be punished monetarily or socially for not wanting to use it.

[dead]

I hope this is sounding alarm bells for everyone else as much as me.

Larry's son buys Paramount (CBS) and promptly fires Stephen Colbert, a money making machine who was leading his timeslot as what was, in hindsight, a clear message to everyone that nobody is safe if they don't fall in line.

Larry now gets TikTok, which like it or not is the most influential social media platform among today's youth.

Both are Trump fanatics. This is the next stage in the Ailes playbook that has already gone too far in ruining the American experiment.

• otterley

  yesterday at 4:42 AM

  > Stephen Colbert, a money making machine

  Unfortunately not: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/business/media/stephen-co...

  • yesterday at 5:35 AM

• firesteelrain

  yesterday at 7:44 AM

  Stephen Colbert shutting down was explained otherwise when it happened.

  [1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-colbert-got-canceled

  • conductr

    yesterday at 8:11 PM

    Conjecture. But, since the article says Colbert has 10 months left, I think this would be a awesome turn of events if they canceled his show for political reasons (to get Trump's FCC approval) only to ultimately keep the show now that the FCC has approved the deal. That would be the purest form of beating Trump at his own game.

• 1234letshaveatw

  yesterday at 6:10 PM

  Colbert a money making machine? Did the hackernews admins merge two threads from alternate universes?

One more reason to despise Oracle.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/tech/details-emerge-on-u-s-china-tiktok-...

(which has a clearer title that's not that much different than days ago news: U.S. Investors, Trump Close In on TikTok Deal With China)

• dang

  yesterday at 3:55 PM

  We changed the URL from https://www.reuters.com/world/china/oracle-silver-lake-conso... to the article that it points to.

  • anon1395

    yesterday at 3:59 PM

    dang why can't I downvote comments

    • dang

      yesterday at 4:01 PM

      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

      • anon1395

        yesterday at 4:02 PM

        what is this threshold?

[flagged]

• 1234letshaveatw

  yesterday at 6:04 PM

  hackernews going full reddit lol

[flagged]

• otterley

  yesterday at 4:45 AM

  Why is it that for nearly every story involving a Jewish name, someone has to come in and complain about Israel? Besides, there are plenty of venues to criticize Israeli policy and actions, especially if you do so respectfully.

I think this is a massively good step forward.

However, TikTok is still a brain rot slop machine and we would be right to question Ellison's motivations.

What does this “stake” get America at all? Will they be able to change the algorithms or censorship or amplification on TikTok? The point of the ban was to avoid national security issues from having an adversarial state (China) controlling speech in America. Banning it entirely is the best way to avoid these problems.

As a reminder, TikTok forces staff to sign pledges to support China’s political system in order to work there and get stock awards:

https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...

• Fade_Dance

  last Tuesday at 10:29 PM

  >Banning it entirely is the best way to avoid these problems.

  Too popular to ban. Political constraints.

  >Will they be able to change the algorithms or censorship or amplification on TikTok?

  "An Asia-based investor of ByteDance said the new US TikTok entity would use at least part of the Chinese algorithm but train it in the US on American user data."

  ________________

  I'm not sure you're looking at this the right way though. This isn't some conclusion of a search for the optimal way to address the situation (which would probably be an actual digital privacy framework). The ban couldn't go through because the app was too popular and Trump liked the attention he was getting on it. So if the ban has to be backed out of, what's the second best option? A "deal" of course, from the world's best deal maker. It's no more complicated than that.

  The Intel stake is the same - barely thought out. If you haven't noticed, this has been a common theme in many policy decisions lately.

  • nemothekid

    yesterday at 5:16 AM

    >(which would probably be an actual digital privacy framework)

    The ban wasn't executed on digital privacy concerns. The intent of the original ban was on digital privacy concerns, and that was shot down.

    >The Intel stake is the same - barely thought out. If you haven't noticed, this has been a common theme in many policy decisions lately.

    The TikTok ban passed under Biden, and the ball was kicked to Trump so he would deal with the political fallout. But the reason the ban passed the second time around was because China would not censor content about the Gaza genocide. The ban had no legs until October 7th and TikTok frustrated the US/Israel message that Hamas was homicidal terrorist group that spawned from no where.

    What seems obvious is that, yes, the new TikTok, will fall in line with other US owned social media companies when it comes to spreading US propoganda.

    So while Chinese social networks have "What happened in tiananmen square?", US social networks will have "Is Israel committing a genocide?".

    • myvoiceismypass

      yesterday at 6:57 PM

      > The TikTok ban passed under Biden, and the ball was kicked to Trump so he would deal with the political fallout

      The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) was _passed by a Republican House_.

• dragonwriter

  last Tuesday at 10:34 PM

  > What does this “stake” get America at all?

  “America” is an abstraction. It gets the people who will own the new entity something, and its gets the government decisionmakers something, and that’s, in practice, more important than what it gets “America”.