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TikTok offered an extraordinary deal. The U.S. government took a pass.
(www.washingtonpost.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Holy shit, that is a sweet deal. What I think is more interesting however, is that it's also kinda revealing that they think law works like this in the West - and also what level of control they think is acceptable for a state to have.
This is even more extreme than Douyin's arrangement with the Chinese government lmao
It's so funny
What I like is that the west is the one failing to stick to its own stated principles of capitalism and private property.
The US has basically always had some level of federal control over some private property, beginning with construction of the National Road in 1806. "Principles of capitalism and private property" as you describe it here is a much newer ideology popularized by Reagan in the 80s that's still a libertarian fever dream much more representative of the US Republican party rather than "the West."
No doubt, but it is the rhetoric of today. But this is still yet different than control of limited physical resources. It's a company who built a product. It's clear nationalism over principles.
Tbh I'd say it's more about the fact china doesn't allow western companies in china to do what tiktok was doing in the us.
And yet all of the concessions that tiktok has made until now show that it is perfectly willing to play ball with the US government, it just isn't willing or allowed to sell its algorithm because China clamps down on capital exports heavily for economic reasons.
I mean... These terms exceed what Douyin does in China. It's actually an insane level of concessions.
That’s the huge take away here. The Chinese can’t comprehend that the DOD doesn’t have a social media control division. Yes we have the NSA and stuff spying, but they don’t control anything.
Most media in the US simply parrot the state department line. Not even out of a conspiracy or anything, but because the US government is very often the only "realiable" source of information for media outlets on a lot of topics. Since corporate media is lazy and tries to report on things asap, they also tend to copy each other a lot, often to hilarious results. I can't count the number of times where have tried to dip deeper into a story looking at multiple articles only to find that most news websites are simply using the exact same wording as each other. If you look for primary sources, you will often find entire media spectacles built upon just 1 shaky primary source.
State control over the literally is pretty much communism 101. It's not really surprisingly or revealing of anything given that it is a Chinese company. It's like going to America and being surprised that they have hamburgers and McDonalds.
Honestly that seems fine.