The stated purpose of the law was to get TikTok out of the hands of a foreign adversary, and that was accomplished. Remember when Trump took office, and lots of people were worried he would refuse to enforce this law?
It sounds like the author would have preferred that a different group of billionaires take over.
It's very optimistic to assume that China was beaten here.
Bytedance still owns the algorithm and 30% of the new company. This new wrapper firm is just being granted the license to serve as Bytedance's operations, essentially. All the stuff about it being 'trained on US content' and 'overseen' by Oracle is smoke and mirrors. This is really just the zombie of the deal that was done four years[1] ago and then quietly scrubbed.
This isn't significantly different than the way TikTok has been operating all along, the only difference is a few of the administration's cronies are able to get their heads into the feeding trough.
From a libertarian perspective, I also thought this was a bad law. It totally abandons faith in the idea of free speech, and admits that China’s “great firewall” was the right idea. I think it’s better to document any lies that were being spread on TikTok, and counter them with truth.
If your first reaction is “but that won’t work!” then you don’t really believe in a free speech based society, and all that’s left to do is argue over which group of shadowy billionaires should get to control everyone.
> The stated purpose of the law was to get TikTok out of the hands of a foreign adversary, and that was accomplished.
I don't know how we conclude that:
> The new U.S. operations of TikTok will have three “managing investors” that will collectively own 45 percent of the company: Oracle Corporation, Silver Lake, and MGX.
> the private equity firm Silver Lake (which has broad global investments in Chinese and Israeli hyper-surveillance)
> 30.1 percent will be “held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9 percent will be retained by ByteDance.”
Now we have oligarchs, plus a major surveillance investor group, plus the Chinese.
This doesn't seem to be a solution to anything except that "a deal was made", and any further attempts at cleaning up credible risks have so many players to deal with, they would be DOA.
mullingitover|2 months ago
It's very optimistic to assume that China was beaten here.
Bytedance still owns the algorithm and 30% of the new company. This new wrapper firm is just being granted the license to serve as Bytedance's operations, essentially. All the stuff about it being 'trained on US content' and 'overseen' by Oracle is smoke and mirrors. This is really just the zombie of the deal that was done four years[1] ago and then quietly scrubbed.
This isn't significantly different than the way TikTok has been operating all along, the only difference is a few of the administration's cronies are able to get their heads into the feeding trough.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/19/trump-says-he-has-approved-t...
jnovek|2 months ago
Meekro|2 months ago
If your first reaction is “but that won’t work!” then you don’t really believe in a free speech based society, and all that’s left to do is argue over which group of shadowy billionaires should get to control everyone.
Nevermark|2 months ago
I don't know how we conclude that:
> The new U.S. operations of TikTok will have three “managing investors” that will collectively own 45 percent of the company: Oracle Corporation, Silver Lake, and MGX.
> the private equity firm Silver Lake (which has broad global investments in Chinese and Israeli hyper-surveillance)
> 30.1 percent will be “held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9 percent will be retained by ByteDance.”
Now we have oligarchs, plus a major surveillance investor group, plus the Chinese.
This doesn't seem to be a solution to anything except that "a deal was made", and any further attempts at cleaning up credible risks have so many players to deal with, they would be DOA.