Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/china-wants-tiktok-shut-down-i.html
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And once again, global affairs boil down to authoritarian dick-measuring.
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And gangsterism. The Chinese government seems a bit put off by Biff’s demand that the U.S. government (which he sees as himself and his cronies) gets to “wet its beak” in any deal to sell TikTok – that’s supposed to be their jam.
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Since Trump has chosen to speak on the matter, I am envisioning this as a “Please don’t throw me into the briar patch” reply to provoke Trump into acting against his own interests, exposing his own weaknesses further, and alienating anyone affected by such an outcome.
I see this whole conversation disintegrating into: “US Censorship, Good; China Censorship, Bad,” with the roles reversed from China’s point of view. (Spoiler, they are both bad actors, each with their own dirty secrets.)
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This is one of those stories I find impossible to care about, because everyone and everything involved is awful. All sides are bad actors and the stakes being fought over are a crappy cynical service with zero apparent moral value to society. Yet somehow, whoever wins, I feel like we’re all gonna lose.
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Google pulled out of China because of the censorship issues, but everyone would have laughed if China had tried to force Google to sell their Chinese operations to China. Trump’s doing the same thing.
That said, it’s scary that China’s government has access to so much data on American youth today, including their favorite 15-second solo dance moves.
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For me it is one of the best Trump’s dramas playing out right now. After humiliating low energy rally in Tulsa, those close to Trump fearing his vindictive nature convinced him that the Tik Tok prank/meme was responsible for high expectations but low attendance. Tik Tok users were egging each other on to register for the Tulsa rally, but never go.
Two weeks later (Aug 6th) Trump signs executive order effectively banning Tik Tok. The administration claims this is to protect American privacy, but we really know why and it has nothing to do with privacy. No one wants to kill a golden egg laying goose, so everyone just assumed Tik Tok will be sold to American company. Trump gloated for setting wheels in motion to the point he was asking for a cut of the deal.
September 15th is 4 days away. China says it will kill Tik Tok rather than sell it. Power move here. Trump recently doubled down on not extending his executive order.
Trump painted himself into a corner. His only way out is to go through on his promise. If he backs out the press will eat him alive. He will appear weak.
Now let me tell you about Tik Tok. Young people love it. Looooooove it. They have their memes, dances, Tik Tok celebrities, their own language, inside jokes, etc. 100 million users. And Trump is going to kill it
He is going to piss off millions of content creators 2 months before election. And some these content creators are really good. Their ideas are genuinely innovative, their videos are professional, they are the masters of grabbing attention. Oh man, you should see some of these kids and their transition videos. They are sooooooo well done. And it is all organic.None of that boardroom, market research, pseudo genuine slop we have been fed through radio and TV.
Trump the 3-d chess negotiator will need 10 billions of dollars to counteract the pissed off youth.
I think Zapp Branningan said it best “If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate”
Dude, grab your popcorn. September 15th is just four days away.
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I think you over-estimate how many and how important TicTok users are to the election, and under estimate how quickly they will find something else to be entertained by. The TicTok user base is extremely young. Those were fickle non-voters who were going to break towards Biden if they bothered to vote anyways.
The rewards for TikTok imploding is to have it dominate the news cycle, which is a good thing for Trump. If we are arguing about whether or not a Chinese company should be collecting data on kids, even if the kids really like the app, and not talking about the 200,000+ dead Americans, that’s a win for Trump. In fact, this whole topic is a winner of an issue for Trump. It only pisses off people that were not going to vote for him anyways, and “fuck that big Chinese corporation that was collecting data on us” is a pretty easy and simple argument to make.
People that think that this is going to hurt Trump are living in their filter bubbles. For the vast majority of Americans, this just looks like some tweens who got duped by a Chinese corporation getting upset when the adults took their dumb toy away. The longer the conversation is about whether or not the US should be banning a data collection apps from Chinese corporation, the better for Trump. The bigger, larger, and louder this melodrama gets, the more this servers Trump’s interests.
You are not witnessing a loss for Donald Trump as he backs himself into a corner. You are witnessing a very successful distraction that will do him no harm, and might actually help. “Fuck that Chinese corporation collecting data on your kids” is a winning argument, no matter how loud the kids howl in protest.
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All of this talk about sales to various potential bidders or shutting down US operations entirely still seems a bit premature to me. How is this executive order going to hold up in court? Tik-Tok will get an injunction, the case will drag on for years and by the time it’s finally settled, Kamala Harris will already be president.
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