TikToK Goes the Trump Clock
Don't try to search the word "fascism"
Thank goodness there’s something to write about this morning other than the hog fest currently underway in DC, though today’s essay does involve Dear Leader and his billionaire bros.
If there’s one thing about the social media app TikTok that we should've learned by now is that its existence is all about being ill-defined. Its ownership, algorithm, influence, and future all exist in a political fog. As I’m writing this, the uncertainty could include swapping one authoritarian government for another in control.
For now, the app has been turned back on after going dark late Saturday. The company said Sunday it was restoring service to users in the United States because President-elect Donald Trump said he would try to pause by executive order on his first day in office. Even as TikTok came back online, it remained unavailable for download in Apple and Google’s app stores.
Trump flip flopped on this issue, having started the conversation about banning the app during his first administration. Now, he’s poised to start his presidency by being the one who saves TikTok, which could certainly help him with younger voters and likely much of the media from which the voices shouting “national security” have faded into the background.
The app's brief blackout might have been a PR masterstroke for Trump. Once service was restored, TikTok thanked the incoming president for absolving its service providers of liability and said it would work with him "on a long-term solution." But some conservative heavyweights are already pushing back on the plan, and the app is still unavailable on Apple and Google's stores. The Verge editor Nilay Patel wrote on Bluesky, "the only way to read this is that a guy who is not the President said 'you may break the law for a while and I won’t punish you when I become President' and everyone said, sure, good enough."
Mind you, there’s some wiggle room here for Trump and TikTok. The law passed last April does NOT call for the app to be taken down; the company was to be sold, and we’re now technically in the “or else” phase. App stores can no longer offer TikTok and no external maintenance is allowed. (Over time this will cause the app to degrade) It also gives the President the ability to extend the deadline by 90 days if a deal to sell is imminent, though it’s very specific about what an imminent sale is, and that isn’t happening.
The President cannot use an executive order to override a statute passed by Congress. So watch what is actually done with executive orders.
Our incoming Chief Executive never does anything for altruistic reasons. And in keeping with any acquiescence to strong man rule we might entertain, the “solution” to the TikTok dilemma as proposed by the incoming President is (his words):
“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to [stay] up. … Therefore, my initial thought is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50% ownership in a joint venture set up between the U.S. and whichever purchase[r] we so choose.”
America, get ready for Trump TikTok. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is attending the inauguration with a prime seating location.
The reason for this change, Americans have been told, is that the app is controlled by or vulnerable to the Chinese government, which typically gets called communist, even though that word only triggers us olds anymore.
In a world where authoritarian regimes are popping up like mushrooms after a good rain, the details of governance don’t seem as relevant as they used to. I’ll bet that, sans all the cold war trigger words, polling would show that a majority of Americans would support the structure and substance of China’s system of rule.
TikTok is a capitalist success story; just one not influenced by the coterie of billionaires circling the Oval Office. It contributed $24.2 billion to the U.S. GDP in 2023 and supported at least 224,000 American jobs.
For all the posturing over the dangers of TikTok, little proof has ever emerged showing the app as anything other than what it is: arguably the most culturally and politically relevant social media platform today, particularly for younger generations.
Last week's big tech event was the Supreme Court giving the go-ahead for Congress to ban Tiktok, because somehow the First Amendment allows the US government to shut down a speech forum if they don't like the content of its messages. From now on, only Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk and Tim Cook and the faceless mere centimillionaires running companies like Match.com will be able to directly harvest Americans' most private, sensitive kompromat. The People's Liberation Army will have to build their dossiers on Americans' lives the old fashioned way: by paying unregulated data-brokers who will sell any fact about you to anyone and who know everything about everyone.
However, I was able to find an anecdote from a reliable source (Matt Stoller, who writes about corporate malfeasance and monopolies) suggestive of a CCCP taint:
A few months ago, I ran into a former TikTok employee at a bar at night, and we got to talking. This guy, call him Calvin, told me about how creepy the internal operations of TikTok are in terms of privacy and lurid material, and how he encountered specific operational documents in Chinese that the company explicitly sought to have not translated. He was disillusioned, and said he thought that company officials routinely lied to American officials about how much was managed from China.
It’s absolutely true that any business based in China is subject to government takeover and therefore pliant to official demands. Therefore, the potential exists for political manipulation.
From SpyTalk:
In a parting shot from the Biden administration, the U.S. government sanctioned a Chinese company on Friday that allegedly pulled off what one senator called the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far.”
The Treasury Department said Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology Co. had “direct involvement” in the hacks of nine U.S. telecommunication firms and internet service providers, including Verizon and AT&T. Treasury said the hacks, by a group dubbed “Salt Typhoon,” were linked to Chinese intelligence, which had “strong ties” to Sichuan Juxinhe. Salt Typhoon is said to have targeted the phones of Donald Trump, JD Vance, and officials in the Harris campaign. They also gained access to the “Lawful Intercept” system that the U.S. government uses to monitor communications under court-authorized wiretapping requests.
Bloomberg reported that FBI leaders fear that Salt Typhoon hackers may have stolen months of agents’ call and text logs, “setting off a race within the bureau to protect the identities of confidential informants.” Also sanctioned was Shanghai-based hacker Yin Kecheng, who was allegedly behind the breach of sensitive systems within the Treasury Department. The Wall Street Journal reported that hackers “accessed unclassified files located on compromised work computers of a range of senior officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.”
The European Union bans TikTok on any government device. The evidence for doing so stops at “because we said so.”
Tik Tok users in Europe topped 150 million last summer, growing at a rate of 8 million over the preceding year. Other large platforms have plateaued in Europe (including Snapchat, Facebook and X, which has actually seen a decrease in EU actives).
It’s also true that the American market matters to TikTok is that America is the only rich, populous country in the world without a federal privacy law, making its populace the most audience an ad-tech company can acquire. A Pew Research poll found that a third of U.S. adults use the app, including six in 10 Americans under 30.
Its wide reach does make TikTok a tempting target, but its cultural and political impact is what’s important. In a world full of enshittified internet, per Taylor Lorenz:
…the app democratized content creation by disrupting the follower-based model of social media, allowing creators from a wider range of backgrounds to amass significant followings quickly. TikTok let "average" people enter the content creator industry without them having to invest an enormous amount of time or resources into building a platform.
Because of this low barrier to entry and the community that TikTok fostered, it became a fertile ground for progressive speech and activism. The early days of the pandemic provided unprecedented access to a captive audience, which allowed a generation of content creators to build their platforms around issues like LGBTQ rights, racial justice, climate activism, and other progressive causes.
While the majority of news content creators across the social media landscape are conservative men, a recent study found that TikTok is the only platform where left-leaning news influencers outnumber right-leaning ones. TikTok also has more than double the concentration of news content creators who identify as LGBTQ+ or advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and 73% of teens who identify as Democrats or lean left use TikTok, compared to 52% of teens who identify as Republican, according to Pew Research.
The Russian/Hungarian/American brand of authoritarianism functions best when political competitors are marginalized, as opposed to outright bans. And that’s not to mention the opportunity for grift. Trump has increased his net wealth via ownership in Truth Social, an app with an underwhelming number of users, for no sound economic reason other than the suck ups and losers who’ve bought stock.
The hope with shutting down or taming TikTok is at least partially driven by owners of legacy social media platforms, who have already shifted their energies into professing fealty to the Dear Leader. Foolishly, they think they’ll gain new content creators as they create and maintain petri dishes for reactionary ideologues.
Over at The Message Box, Dan Pfieffer says Democrats blew when it comes to the politics of banning TikTok:
It’s hard to overstate how central TikTok is to younger Americans’ media diet. It is where they connect with friends, follow the news, track trends in music and fashion, and do a lot of their shopping. For this cohort, the most famous and influential celebrities are not on TV or in the movies, but are TikTok influencers like Brianna LaPaglia, Charlie D’Amelio, Khaby Lame, and others.
Getting rid of it is a huge deal.
It is the equivalent of telling a millennial or Gen Xer in the early 2000s that Congress is banning cable television. One day, ESPN, MTV, CNN, Comedy Central, and the rest would all be gone.
As the reality of the ban sunk in, support for it plummeted. When it first passed, 50% of Americans were supportive. By November of 2024, that number was down to 32%. Only 10% of TikTok users support a ban.
Our reality is, on a daily basis, being dictated to us everywhere and most of the time. It’s too bad that the agencies doing research on commercial abuse of internet data will be allowed to wither away in the coming administration.
Heather Cox Richardson took note of a Federal Trade Commission study published late Friday night. (Emphasis mine)
The initial findings of the FTC using data from six of the eight companies show that those prices are not static. Middlemen can target prices to individuals using their location, browsing patterns, shopping history, and even the way they move a mouse over a webpage. They can also use that information to show higher-priced products first in web searches. The FTC found that the intermediaries—the middlemen—worked with at least 250 retailers.
“Initial staff findings show that retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods and services—from a person's location and demographics, down to their mouse movements on a webpage,” said FTC chair Lina Khan. “The FTC should continue to investigate surveillance pricing practices because Americans deserve to know how their private data is being used to set the prices they pay and whether firms are charging different people different prices for the same good or service.”
Meanwhile, Kyle Chayka at New Yorker newsletter observed:
During the days leading up to the TikTok stoppage, I saw Americans, in video after video, sharing content from RedNote and reciting basic Mandarin vocabulary with an enthusiasm that harked back to the heyday of China’s greater openness to international culture, in the mid-two-thousands. If the U.S. government is concerned about the Chinese government’s influence online, the ban seemed to accomplish the opposite of the desired effect.
Finally, it needs to be said that the Chinese government is open about saying that the algorithm powering TikTok is not for sale. Some of Trump’s billionaire buddies are proposing to buy the company sans the secret sauce that makes it work; if that happens look out for the virtual version of whack-a-mole as new apps with unclear ownership pop up.
The problem with Dry January by Lyz at Men Yell at Me
This is all an attempt to reassert “masculine” control over feminized spaces. As if femininity was something we needed to fumigate. Of course, in these arguments, it’s not just about the gender binary. Masculinity is code for the white patriarchal norm of men in spaces where everyone else struggles to fit and belong. It’s why Elon Musk’s X and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta are now suddenly abdicating themselves of responsibility to make these places less toxic, bring back slurs and name-calling. It’s about forcing everyone whose unruly body does not comply out of public life.
And while yes, this is being legislated by Republicans, what I think is powerful about McMillan Cottom’s piece is it describes how this forced compliance is enacted not just through conservative politics but through ideas of wellness, motherhood, and womanhood. And it’s worth reflecting on how we police compliance in our daily lives. What oppression do we willingly participate in as we struggle to make our bodies and our lives “pure” and “clean” in the new year?
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I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers by Marina Hyde at The Guardian
Living your life to impress other men by hating women is one of the most embarrassing things I can imagine. Looking up to any of these men for how to live your life is even sadder.
I’ve worked hard to keep these kinds of men out of my personal life, to keep them away from me, out of my goddamn sight. Now they are in my face daily, not only influencing the world for the worse but making me nauseous at how uncool and pathetic they are, on top of their other sins. It’s too much, I can’t take it, there needs to be a change.
It’s time for us to start getting revenge on the nerds.
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Musk’s LA wildfire response: A triumph of PR over substance by Caleb Ecarma at Musk Watch (New!)
On January 9, Elon Musk announced to his 213 million followers on X that he would provide a “free” month of internet access to those impacted by the deadly wildfires in Southern California. It would be offered through Starlink, a satellite internet service operated by SpaceX, Musk's space exploration company.
But missing from Musk's announcement on X was a costly detail: To claim the free month of satellite internet service, eligible Los Angeles area residents first would have to spend a minimum of $349 on a Starlink hardware kit. "A Starlink kit is currently required to access this free service," Starlink notes on its website. "If you do not already have a Starlink kit, you will need to purchase one from starlink.com/residential or an authorized retailer such as Best Buy or Home Depot." According to Starlink, if you order a kit from the company, it typically takes 1-2 weeks to arrive.
Starting February 10, anyone who purchased a $349 kit and claimed the "free" service will be transferred to "a paid Residential subscription," which is currently $120 monthly. Existing Starlink customers living in eligible areas were given a one-month subscription credit.
The disconnect between Musk's public announcement and the reality of the residential internet offer is part of a pattern in Musk's response to the Los Angeles fires. While the initiatives helped some people, the impact is far more limited than Musk's posts — and the attendant media coverage — suggest.
