ByteDance is a private profit-maximising company. What would make most financial sense to them now?
Leave the profitable US market and continue with less revenue
Sell everything at fire sale prices to oligarchs connected to the US regime
Somehow split into a TikTok for the free world and one for Burgerland and just sell the latter to the US oligarchs, thereby exposing their algorithms to the yanks.
And is it likely that the Chinese government would be intervening to get one outcome over another?
This is simply one of the first steps towards US-China decoupling.
The US knows that it cannot contain China, cannot stop China from technologically surpassing itself. But the US still controls the global tech industry market, and China is still distances from transitioning away an export-led economy.
That’s why the US is specifically targeting Huawei. These targets were very specifically and strategically chosen. They want Huawei to succeed in developing their native technology and architectures, so down the road the US can simply force the rest of the world to choose between Apple/Google ecosystems, or the Chinese Harmony ecosystem, citing technical incompatibility between the two (many US government agencies already have a strict requirement regarding technology use involving Chinese components).
The global tech sector has far too much invested in and have their entire operations built around the existing Apple/Google/Amazon ecosystems so it will become very painful and costly to make the switch even if a superior Chinese alternative is available. At the end of the day, if you want to earn dollars, as a business, you’d have to weigh how much you’d be willing to risk losing (especially against your competitors) when the US declares that use of native Chinese technology is no longer accepted in your business dealing with them.
This Tiktok debacle is really just setting up the legal precedences for what they actually intend to commit to in their strategic planning down the road.
To understand the landlord empire, you need to think like a landlord. Microsoft did not dominate the consumer market because they made the best products, but because they were the best at using legal means to stop their competitors from penetrating the market.
The big difference here is that if your competition can out-compete you using Chinese infrastructure, you will be forced into at least figuring out a way to dual-use it.
Ultimately, this is a Microsoft/Apple situation. It’s just who will be Microsoft and who will be Apple. I think that, over time, most of the cutting edge tech will migrate over to Chinese tech, even if the rest of the world doesn’t exactly. That said, Africa and Asia (outside of the colonial outposts) will mostly be in the Chinese tech sphere.
This might be sincere, but as someone who worked in M&A in a past life, it’s pretty standard to say “I’m not interested in selling” to bluff the price up a bit.
Thing is, it’s only the US that would be threatening to ban it. And if they sell, this FreedumbTok would be available in most other countries. It would create a world-class competitor overnight, exactly equivalent to their product, that would also have a gigantic competitive advantage- access to US consumers and businesses. FreedumbTok would likely eat away at TikTok in the rest of the world. They won’t sell
My understanding is that the algorithm at the core of TikTok cannot be ecported from China without the approval of Chinese regulators, and it seems pretty likely that they’ll not approve a sale at gunpoint.
It also makes sense to me that they’d rather just amputate their US operations to preserve their IP and prevent an American competitor from fighting over their market share everywhere else.
it seems pretty likely that they’ll not approve a sale at gunpoint
This seems like the issue to me: if the U.S. can force this sale at a deadline-discounted price, what would stop the U.S. from doing this to every Chinese company that has success in the U.S.?
I might be wrong but I think their data centers are in the US and there’s not really that complicated of an algorithm, just a lot of raw data on what each user likes/watches
I feel like they’ve got a strong constitutional case. One BBC article I read said that 60% of their company ownership is by global hedge funds so they just plainly aren’t a Chinese company. Singling them out for having dissident information through an act of congress is precisely what the 1st Amendment is supposed to protect against. With the sale supposed to happen in November at the earliest, the red scare will either fade by then or become a much larger issue they can capitalise on.
The constitution means jack shit, it wouldn’t matter if it explicitly stated “TikTok shall not be banned”, the state does whatever the fuck it wants and the hardest part is coming up with the weasel words in the judgement that explains how it’s perfectly constitutional, ackshually.
Those places entered into China while agreeing to those restrictions. That’s different than the US allowing foreign investment then rugpulling it and stealing the Chinese owned portion of a business after the fact.
In order to retaliate, China needs to seize or steal American capital.
Outside of presiding over massive inflation, the loss of women’s right to choose, genocide of the Palestinians, the arming of Nazis in a proxy war, increasing terror at the US border, increasing warrantless surveillance on Americans who aren’t in Congress, increasing police budgets everywhere, killing free speech, and making criticism of Israel a hate crime, what mistakes can you point to that Biden has made? We’re actually lucky if you think of all the bad stuff throughout history that he hasn’t presided over.
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