The House passed a bill that would require China to sell TikTok to a US or US-friendly buyer, or the US will turn it off. There are political ramifications. Here’s what to expect.
Internet War
The Wall Street Journal reports Internet War Intensifies as House Passes TikTok Ban
The House on Saturday easily passed a bill that would force a sale or ban of TikTok, which is owned by China–based ByteDance, bringing closer to reality a law that could remove the popular app and deepen the internet divide between the two countries.
The measure, which passed 360-58 and was tied to a sweeping aid package for Israel and Ukraine, would give ByteDance up to a year to sell the app—compared with the six-month period proposed in a prior bill.
If ByteDance can’t find a buyer within that time, TikTok—which has 170 million users in the U.S.—would be banned.
The Senate could vote on the bill in coming days. President Biden has previously said that he would sign such a bill into law.
Earlier this week, Beijing forced Apple to help close a loophole that some Chinese users had been exploiting to access already-banned services, including two of Meta’s apps, WhatsApp and Threads.
To some experts, it was seen as a small move—given that the country has already banned many outside social-media services and messaging apps—but indicative of China’s intentions to further push foreign companies out.
“The direction is clear,” said Dan Wang, a visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Tsai China Center. “The walls are going up.”
Happy With This Action?
Some of my friends applaud the move by China on grounds China restricts US companies.
Does that mean we should stoop to their level? What if China passed a law requiring Google to sell itself to a China-friendly buyer? What if China tried to buy Apple or Boeing?
Would the US allow any of those actions?
Is TikTok a Genuine Security Threat?
If the answer is no, and I strongly believe the answer is no, then this law is nonsense. It’s just one more way the US tries to enforce sanctions on the whole world.
Sanctions never work. And the purpose here is exceptionally dubious in the first place.
What’s Next?
If it was a single bill, the Senate could reject it, and that is what I once thought would happen. But the House combined bills on Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and TikTok into one take it or leave it bill to the Senate.
I don’t expect Senate to make changes because then the House could make changes again, and everyone is desperate to waste $95 billion in aid to Israel and Ukraine.
Even if TikTok can find a US buyer, China would likely block the sale just as the US would block the sale of Google or Apple to China.
TikTok Ban Bill Worse Than It Looks
Politically Speaking
170 million US TiKTok users will not exactly be happy, to say the least. Biden will get the blame, as he should, because he could have spoken up against this bill, threatening a veto.
The bill cleverly gave China 12 months to postpone this until after the election. But people are not that stupid.
It’s not that these young voters will suddenly embrace Trump, but plenty of them will be mad enough over many things, to sit the election out.
I expect a less turnout this November than in 2020. This does not help Biden who picked up huge percentages of the youth vote.
Thoughts on the Election
For more election analysis, please see People Who Rent Will Decide the 2024 Presidential Election
For more on TiKTok please see my sarcastic post: I’m Putting Together a Group to Buy TikTok, Details Coming
I am not saying social media is good but tiktok seriously send users down disturbing rabbit holes that make you feel terrible and not good about yourself or the world. Their algorithms likes people to feel sad? You start watching happy but eventually it feeds you 90% sadness.
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/inside-tiktoks-highly-secretive-algorithm/investigation-how-tiktok-algorithm-figures-out-your-deepest-desires/6C0C2040-FF25-4827-8528-2BD6612E3796?mod=WSJvidctr__pos0
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-feeds-teens-a-diet-of-darkness-8f350507
tikToc will re-name itself Paddy-Whack and continue to operate….
Odd how republicans agreed to a year for the sale instead of six months. I suppose they too don’t want Trump back in office.
If TikTok is really ban in US, it could ignite a revolution against the govt.
Musk to the rescue?
TikTok is too Asian and not Jewish enough, according to our Jewish overlords.
The main purpose is for we the sheeple to be “influenced” only be OUR Intelligence agencies and propaganda, not THEIR propaganda because uh… er… FREEDOM, yeah that’s why. /sarc
Google already has algorithms that will limit sites that report Muslim terrorism…not that Mish cares about that to begin with. GoFund Me refused to allow Kyle Rittenhouse to raise funds for his successful defense against the three criminals that tried to kill him…including a child molester, which made Rittenhouse a Trump-like pariah to the left wing whackos. Facebook censors stories on how masks don’t work against the Chinese communist virus and the mansions of the Black Olives Matter terrorist leaders. Censorship, like violence, is as American as apple pie
Who needs those stupid dancing nurse videos?
What happens next is more internet censorship. This bill was never about TikTok, it was and is a trojan horse designed to give the government sweeping power over internet content in much the same way Brazil and Australia are moving against X.
Maybe Musk can somehow raise the funds to buy TikTok? That might be the only way to keep it from becoming yet another government controlled propaganda medium, at least for as long as Musk can survive before they also take him off the airwaves.
If some people in the US are censoring “Gone with the wind” or “To kill a mockingbird”, why not Mao’s propaganda?
Ever more retro moves back to 1930’s-style prohibition, nationalism and protectionism with the usual results. But what to expect from such dumb DC pols ?
I’ll tell you what comes next, and it has nothing to do with TikTok, unless it’s the sound of a ticking time bomb. Russia has now tested an undetectable supersonic ICBM, while the Nutjob Neocons continue to antagonize everyone to start WWIII.
Putin’s Inauguration date, May 7th, may turn out to be another day that lives in False Flag infamy. Putin could set off a nuke in the upper atmosphere and take out all communications, rendering our sophisticated electronic military toothless.
The Nutjobs goal of killing 50% of the population to save the planet looks plausible. But hey, the Climate Clock in NYC shows we only have 3 years until the earth is destroyed by soccer moms driving their SUV’s, so we might as well stop paying taxes and party like it’s 1999. All the tax money is wasted, at best.
“The origin of our evils is the cancer called the Public Sector ” – Javier Milei, President of Argentina
Another step to turn us all off from anything. Beware!
I have no issue with banning tiktok . Then again I also think social media apps should be banned in general and no one under 21 should be allowed to use a smartphone due to the addictive nature of smartphones on developing brains. These things are miswiring kids brains and essentially undoing 10000 years of human development.
How can anyone disagree with your statement? It’s CLEAR science…
I’m not sure what to do. Vote Trump or sit it out. RFK turned out to be an Israeli butt kisser and his choice of VP sure shows his stupidity. Biden is a no deal. Trump, who I voted for twice and with teeth gritted in 2020 is not a deep thinker and does Deep State actions.
I think China will retaliate against this as they should. The CIA/NSA most likely wants a back door into Tik Tok and they told them to F-off. I read this was the case with Telegram. Good luck people. The US government is going to get more restrictive on their citizens. We live in fascist country.
This election is like most……voting for the lesser of 2 evils. 2016 election wasn’t about Trump or Hillary. It was about the Supreme court. I think the 2024 election is important for the Supreme court. We could have some retirements and/or deaths. Getting another Supreme Court Justice that will follow the constistution is my priority.
Why not vote independent? If you sit it out, the status quo wins.
If all the discouraged “Sit it out’ers” voted third party, TPTB would certainly stand up and take notice. So go out and throw your vote away in style!
soon we are going to have people getting 10 year federal prison sentences for using VPN to access tictok.
China is a communist country. Are we striving to emulate the nation that Clinton fathered? His administration opened the doors to trade with China then incentivized manufacturers to set up in China. We built them into what they are today. That’s on us. As far a TicTok, our government has insight into just about everything you do on your device but hardly anyone cares. Privacy isn’t a thing anymore.
You demonstrate the effectiveness of propaganda. China is no more communist than Russia, which the Neocons also want us to believe. You do not have private citizens that are billionaires in a communist country. Mao’s picture still hangs in China because it’s all about not losing face. No politicians will ever admit they were wrong.
Ban it… It’s no different from teen smoking, except for the mind.
Then line up the others for the same reason. It says a lot when the Chinese don’t allow the use of TikTok the way we do.
“whaaaa” says the overweight kid crying for more candy. An adult needs to put a stop to it.
Have you learned yet that banning things causes more problems? We got organized crime because we banned alcohol.
I noticed where even Gerald Celente is even using TikTok. That’s a testament to how restrictive American social media platforms have become due to FBI strongarming and how open Chinese platforms are in comparison. It’s sad that theirs are more free than ours, but it’s 2024 now.
“170 million US TiKTok users will not exactly be happy, to say the least.”
And America will be left even less relevant than it already is. With the more civilized world leaving it even further behind.
Latin America went through a period of this sort of confiscation. For the exact same reasons: The largely illiterate local connected classes could not compete at anything, since they were too stupid and incompetent. So their totalitarian governments did what totalitarian governments always do: Steal stuff from those more competent, then hand it to their favored classes of useless rabble who otherwise couldn’t even feed themselves.
The end result, entirely predictably and inevitably, being: There exists no Latin American company of any relevance. Nor any ability to neither compete nor competitively make use of the technologies/platforms which were stolen; then subsequently mismanaged into irrelevance; by the idiots being handed the loot.
Stealing stuff from competents, then handing it to incompetents, won’t somehow make the incompetents any more competent. Stealing TikTok in order to hand it to the straight-up illiterates owning and running Blackrock, won’t somehow magically make the idiots able to read. All that the can’t-count-can’t-read monkeys of the Junta-favored illiterate “investing” classes will do with TikTok, is render it useless. They simply lack both brains and ability to do anything else. Being handed loot stolen from more competent people who created it, then rendering it worthless by mismanagement and sheer stupidity, is all that they know how to do. Anything more, would be way, way above their meager braingrade.
While TikTok will continue to innovate and serve the still civilized parts of the world. Leaving American third worlders even less able to keep up and compete.
It looks like you haven’t seen what TikTok innovaion has done to the “civilized parts of the world”
Tit for Tat. American apps banned in China:
If they forbid us to influence them while they use their algorithms to “influence” us then why should we give them a free ride? If they let our apps in then I would reconsider but they won’t because they have an agenda that is not in our interest.
You are speaking you bosses’ propaganda again …..NONSENSE in other words ! There are some names there I never heard of , the popular ones though, are definitely NOT forbidden in China !!
Here is Jacques Brel, a great singer/composer from Belgium, singing his love of his country. “Le Plat Pays” (The Flat Country). He was Flemish and sang in both languages. I know you will appreciate it. Enjoy!
(827) Jacques Brel “Le plat pays” | Archive INA – YouTube
Did you really think I don t know Brell ? ! I am not exactly fond of him , he was from Gent if I not mistaken ,, Marieke Marieke (lil’ Marie) is famous too …couldn t care less
Then you must like my comment. Thank you!
For the next one, would you prefer “Amsterdam” or “Vesoul”?
I do admit you managed to slightly unwind me ….so thanks, yes …
en Brussel was toen nog een bruisende stad ..oellalla
I like that version!! It’s beautiful and has the same feel.
btw, Brel is very obsolete stuff…. do you know that ADAMO is still alive and Belgian too ? Of course you don t , what to expect from an American philistine and more recently our flemish, from Limburg, Axelle Red, she s fifthy something by now but still very popular in France …Our most popular singer ever is still Will Tura, now 80+ alzheimer suffering, he never made it over the flemish border though, weird that is….
I am 70 years old and in 1976 when my future wife and still my wife put it on the record player the first time it mesmerized me so Brel is special. I know Lizet and some others but I am not specialized in Belgium singers.
..you are mild tonight , almost makes me feel sorry I sound so harsh occasionally….well, you probably deserve so …occasionally
….and Paul Dombrecht, classic musician, is a personal friend of mine….
He does baroque period music? That is interesting.
in very bad shape now , told him so often not to take the fraudulent poisonous Cvax, must ve had five by now, spent months in hospital with Covid nevertheless …..the biggest racket in history ….MIC is catching up big time though …
Liesabeth List singing “Amsterdam”. I prefer the French version frankly.
Liesbeth List is Dutch ….I didn t know the Amsterdam song , I, must admit , I know her from the popular song ‘De Pastorale’ with the equally, even more popular, dutch singer, Ramses shaffy , the latter had some great songs , un bon vivant he was, booze and drugs….. Liesbet and Ramses now both in the hopefully sweet hereafter…
Here she is singing Amsterdam in Dutch.
Amsterdam (youtube.com)
I can confirm for you that today a few minutes ago that google.com can only be accessed by using a VPN in Bejing.
I would have been able to confirm that for you on every other trip that I have made to China recently as well.
A Friend in Hong Kong says it is accessible there.
Wrong
The US was built to be an open, bottom up, self worship, self expression society.
China was built as a top down worship the state society.
Censorship is needed for one and not the other.
Censorship is antithetical to the American process.
The most important thing to take from this is the window it offers into the DEGREE of censorship and brainwashing already taking place.
Do you really believe?
Blocking Til Tik is the only censorship and social manipulation undertaken by the US government in concert with the social media companies.
It’s all fake and the internet is dead.
We should ban Saudi Oil, until they stop banning our gay porn.
Now won’t that make us great again!!
In the decades following WW2, the world did conduct a large scale experiment pitting import bans against openness. With Latin America, decolonizing Africa, the Soviet bloc, China, India and the Arabs restricting imports; while mostly smaller Asian nations,as well as Israel, instead traded freely with all. The result? Once much richer Argentina, vs once much poorer Hong Kong and Singapore. As well as Israel vs its neighbors.
Deng, possessing the sort of otherworldly brainpower required to navigate airplane stairs and the like, caught on. While “we” obviously went the other way. With pretty darned predictable, and by now obvious, consequences: Singapore, vs Argentina. Soon to be Israel vs neighbors, even militarily.
In case anyone forgot, the big anti-TikTok move came when it turned out that the app was pushing (or allowing-to-be-pushed) pro-Gaza videos. The users of TikTok were predictably shown to be anti-genocide in their views. This wasn’t acceptable. A consortium organized by Steven Mnuchin was made instantly available as the future owners.
AIPAC, who is just one of the controllers of Congress, does not approve anti-Israel messages. Our politicians have given up the country’s sovereignty to Israel.
This is it 100%
Gen Z has a very unfavorable opinion of Israel – seems I recall well over 50%.
The boomer’s all went through Frankfurt revised colleges and are overtly sympathetic and susceptible to Jewish truth stretching/enteral victimization tropes.
Obviously a free speech platform not beholden to Israel is going to be evaporated. Horse is out of the barn tho and their “most favored group status” is entering irreversible decline.
No time to waste.
Accelerate….
Look at the Occupy at Yale NYU etc.
It doesn’t help that the future appears hopeless to Gen Z due to unmitigated greed and manipulated economies – they’ll identify with the oppressed – not the aggressors.
WSJ did an article about hiw TikTok sends teenagers olds down a Rabbit hole of very disturbing content.
Mish,
Google is already banned (functionally) in China. They have Baidu as the “Chinese Google”. Just like Facebook and YouTube and half a dozen OTHERS are also banned.
UBER found it “not worth it” eventually in China and decided to sell to Didi a while ago, etc., etc.
China ALREADY had MOST companies forced to have a 50% Chinese Partner to operate / build in China like the Auto Industry. GM / SAIC, VW / SAIC, etc.
So Google is a poor comparison OR You’re making the point for the ban / forced sale of TikTok.
In general I’m NOT for forcing the sale of TikTok, per se, but won’t cry for a second.
Because Chinese Market is HEAVILY Restricted for other countries’ Companies and / or terrible IP protection there, from a “Theft by Duplication / Alteration” or “Forced IP Transfer” tendency in China. Like really Badly and really quickly.
Interesting to see how this works out. It was likely to happen at some point with all the risks of espionage and tracking and possible hacking or theft eventually happening.
Cheers!
Correct.
China just asked Apple to remove Whatsapp and Reels from iphones. Security reasons I believe because they allow encrypted communication that cannot be monitored
“The House passed a bill that would require China to sell TikTok to a US or US-friendly buyer, or the US will turn it off.”
China doesn’t own TikTok more than US owns Fakebook.
If you surveyed the world, you would find most political leaders, and even populations more enlightened and informed, than the elites living out their fantasies behind the great American Wall, a late copy of the Chinese Wall.
All companies, state owned or otherwise are beholden by law to the CCP.
china doesn’t have to own TikTok to be able to control it.
“The bill cleverly gave China 12 months to postpone this until after the election. But people are not that stupid.”
I want whatever you’re smoking… we all know that people are that stupid.
As usual, this will all be great for regime media parasites, propagandists, and perpetual warmongers…..and a pure nightmare for Main Street USA and the citizenry.
Nonsense. TikTok is a plague on productivity and actually living a life. It’s mostly an electronic opiate for the masses.
There’s a Dozen other “Shorts Videos” things out there. People will move to those immediately IF this ever happens.
While I am NOT for the ban / sale it’s not a big deal.
Although there will be plenty of court cases (and probably new reversing legislation AFTER the sale is forced) over this from US / Friendly Power Companies.
It is actually Tiktok you tawkin’ about …..not Facebook neither fckn CNN you tawkin’ about ? Me bein a forenna , I dunno of corse ….
Congress must have huge investors in US social media companies to pass a bill whacking the competition.
Or its equally possible they have US investors lined up to buy it for pennies on the dollar. That’s a tactic as old as time and used quite often in our nations past to obtain land and businesses from ‘foreigners’ or people who looked foreign.
A Mish Talk ban maybe ?! Too many folks here not abiding by Newspeak rules !
Most likely, Mish has nothing to do with memory-holed posts. The posting sites use some third-party filtering like Google. They scan the post for dictionary words. After that for anagrams, palindromes, and finally sarcasm. Not sarcasm trained, the AI bot flatly banns it.
There you have it, you can still use phrases from your elementary school if you remember them.