The sequence of events as far as I can recall:
- Trump promised to ban TikTok
- TikTok was slated to be “banned” in the twilight of Biden’s term
- Trump says he’d give it 90 days to make a decision
- Biden decides not to ban it, handing it off to Trump
- TikTok goes dark
- It returns, but if you search for something anti-Trump in the United States, you can’t find it
- Using a VPN will give you that content
- Various news outlets are now calling it Trump’s “Propaganda Arm”
What the fuck is going on? From a political or technological standpoint.
It’s Trump, the Republicans, Musk, and other billionaires using the power of the government to coerce Bytedance into actions that will be favorable to them. It’s kind of Trump’s MO; threaten people/corporations to enrich his family or otherwise benefit him in some way. They will likely force Bytedance to sell TikTok at a large discount to the government and Trump’s friends.
All corporate social media based in the US is going to turn out like this if it hasn’t already. Surprised Reddit and YouTube haven’t fallen yet.
im pretty sure reddit has done that before. or at least had controversy like it
It was always about control. They had no control over the information and now they do. All of a sudden it’s not a problem anymore.
Maybe you didn’t get the memo all of big tech has decided to shill for trump. google, facebook, tiktok, amazon, X, they all met with trump and kissed the ring and decided to do what they do in other dictatorship countries like China which is censor anything the administration doesn’t like to get concessions from that administration. Trump has all these companies by the balls.
US does US things.
Inevitable commenter: This is just like in China!
Trump has all these companies by the balls.
Which happened because they unzipped their pants and placed their scrotums in Trump’s tiny hands.
well in some cases they were on the verge of being regulated or in the case of Google being threatened to be broken up. So a lot of this seems like self preservation which is just sad.
And then smiled and said “squeeze”.
Democrats walked right into his trap. I don’t think they’re controlled opposition but they sure act like it…
Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. They have shown you who they are, believe them. They are a fund raising party, their only allegiance is to capital.
You got “foreign influenced” like US has done it for decades to other countries. US used to call it spreading democracy or some sort.
Does that help?
Chinese citizens still can’t use TikTok. Curious
that’s because douyin is for them
And the reason for segregating in the first place?
Well there wouldn’t be much point to the Great Chinese Firewall if lots of uncontrolled information was flowing in and out through social media.
Fascism. That’s what’s going on.
He had to defend TikTok to win over youth votes for the election.
Now that he’s pres again, he knows that in one year it will become very apparent that he can’t lower grocery/gas prices, and isn’t willing to take action on home prices, the deficit, AI, or wage inequality.
So instead he has a list of things that will prop up his approval rating, because that is the only metric that actually matters to him. Right now that seems to mean keeping TikTok, and annexing new territory (even if that just means renaming the Gulf of Mexico).
he has a list of things that will prop up his approval rating, because that is the only metric that actually matters to him
This almost feels overly forgiving to Trump, given what the remainder of our political body is. When judging US politicians by which metrics actually matter to them, “approval rating” puts someone way in the upper echelon.
I would not agree. Every metric is subject to Goodhart’s law, approval ratings is no exception. Putin has (allegedly) maintained an approval rating well over 50% for his entire career.
I’m not saying he wants to do right by his constituents, I’m saying he wants to be told he’s a winner. Trump is a narcissist. He’s all the other terrible things because at the end of the day he needs to feel liked. He will only do things that he thinks will fill that void.
Trump doesn’t want people to express freedom of speech as a Nazi he prefers people not know about certain things. The government wants only America propaganda. Therefore TikTok has to cater to Trump’s ego to stay in the US.
I now call it trump tok because of you post anything that’s anti trump or his Nazi regime you will get banned.
If you post anything about LGBT stuff or anything anti “America” you will get banned.
This is the equivalent of modern day book burning.
It’s clear Trump wants to control all social media within the US.
- Musk took twitter and turned it into a far right hate speech platform
- Zuckerberg has a private meeting with Trump. Next day donates $1m to the inaugural fund. Facebook, Instagram and Threads remove fact-checking in the US and Zuckerberg. There’s some very odd fuckery afoot with left searches that are blamed on a technical glitch.
- Tiktok is threatened with closure. They suddenly align themselves with Trump and the lights stay on.
- Google’s boss, Sundar Pichai, is lauded and given a seat of honour at Trump’s inauguration. It’s clear there are established links there.
- Reddit - I don’t know, but Steve Huffman has a /serious/ adoration of Elon Musk and is fond of money and power. If it’s not already in the fold, it will be soon.
I’d put money on that we’re already seeing left and anti-trump messages suppressed, and algorithms adjusted to promote division and discord - not just in the US, but globally. We’ll be seeing platforms other than the above attacked and inflitrated constantly by bots and AI. We’ll reach a point where you literally will be talking to yourself if you are against this. Your messages will just disappear to the point where you question your own reality. Shadowbanned online. Is Lemmy safe? No, not remotely. Decentralisation helps somewhat, but when the heavy guns are laying down suppressing fire from bot armies and destablising agendas - or even just being ruled illegal for some made-up reason, decentralisation doesn’t allow you to fight.
Jim Morrison said, "“Whoever controls the media controls the mind. The media is the message and the message is me.”
The aim here is obvious, and it’s not new. The method is just adjusted for modern day. And truth? Say goodbye to that sucker.
It’s clear Trump wants to control all social media within the US.
And he didn’t even really have to do anything to do it. Capitalism just took its natural course and they all lined up to ride his Toad.
uhh social media has been controlled by the CIA since near its inception.
At least the CIA supposedly cared about national security.
Just because fans of CIA information think it means national security, actual term is preventing the homeland from being invaded. Internalizing hatred information to support war and destabilization of other countries is the CIA mind controlling you.
Yeah but they’re the good guys right?
One thing I’m convinced of is that the blackout was not the result of some technical requirement such as people’s speculation that it was for an algorithm change or to switch over to meta’s servers. It was either a messy result of their compliance department playing it safe or it was a political stunt. Likely a bit of both given how much money it must have cost. Regardless of what you believe about TikTok’s “true” nature, they’re playing ball with the Trump administration.
The narrative about TikTok being Trump’s propaganda wing may just be the newest tactic to paint leftists as fascists, though. Always be critical when legacy media is in lockstep.
There are rumors of Chinese regulators going after bytedance over unfair business practices in china. I think there is something to the whole affair we are not really seeing.
TikTok wasn’t ever actually banned.A ban was signed into law. It had bipartisan support, though that may have been because it was tied in with aid for Ukraine. Biden appeared to have supported it initially but either after public backlash or them actually realizing what a massive fumble it was, Biden’s administration said they would not enforce the ban and leave it to the Trump admins.
TikTok voluntarily shut down their servers, and gave users a super dickridey message about how Trump was going to save the platform. Less than 24 hours later, severs came back up with another dickridey message about how Trump promised to save their platform.
All of this happened before the inauguration.
Edit: im trying my best to make this as accurate as possible pls let me know if I fucked up.
Pretty much summed it up.
