Yes, that's precisely the argument of the pro-ban faction. China doesn't allow TikTok in China. It's not about the money, it's about control over a medium that can be exploited for influence, or at the very least the effects of that platform on its audience.
It's silly to pretend like ByteDance are acting on principle. Go post an LGBT meme or refer to Lai Ching-te as the "President of Taiwan" on Red Note and see how long that lasts.
Sure, but parent's argument was focused on ad revenue and wondering why TikTok chose to forego that revenue ( which presumed that most US entities would bend to such demand, but failed to consider non financial considerations ).
edit:
<< Go post an LGBT meme or refer to Lai Ching-te as the "President of Taiwan" on Red Note and see how long that lasts.
China does not pretend to give lipservice to freedom of speech. US does. That is why its population needs to hold its government accountable.
US used to be much smarter in general. Now that Trump is starting a 2nd term on Monday, the world over now realizes the US is comprised of a bunch of imbeciles. We've lost our prestige, and we'd been trading on it for a long, long time.
The world realizes the USA is no longer messing around, that's all. If anything, we've only gained prestige in the last couple months, we're finally getting stuff done...
Hmm? That is a rather bold statement bordering on bluster. Could you elaborate? The move shows something, but I am not certain it can be interpreted this way.
Not sure why this is so complicated --- blame the DNC and party elites, not the population that voted for Trump.
If the DNC was trying to win, they would have never let Biden run for re-election, and then they would have never let Harris become the candidate without a primary.
The Democrats literally told the US population Trump was going to destroy democracy in America, and then created a situation that enabled him to win in a landslide.
The Democrats didn't lose because Harris didn't get a primary. Literally no one but Republicans who would never have voted for her to begin with cared about that.
Democrats lost because they keep triangulating and trying to appeal to centrist Republicans who either don't exist, or would never vote for them regardless. If Harris had distinguished herself from Biden by taking a firm stance against the Palestinian genocide - which was the single issue much of her base cared about - she would have won.
Also, Trump didn't win in a landslide. It was a close election, and Trump definitely won the popular vote, but the margins were still about 51% to 49%.
> Democrats didn't lose because Harris didn't get a primary
The point is Harris would have been replaced in a primary. Democrats needed a candidate who could call Biden out on his failures, namely, not taking inflation seriously (Manchin said so!) and completely flubbing it on the border.
> If Harris had distinguished herself from Biden by taking a firm stance against the Palestinian genocide
She would have lost worse in Pennsylvania and maybe picked up Michigan and had absolutely zero effect anywhere else because foreign policy wasn’t a material factor in this election. (It was a loud factor. But not in an electorally relevant way.)
I get the impulse to do this. My pet war was Ukraine. But neither was actually voted on because Americans don’t tend to think about foreign policy unless we’re actually at (or about to go to) war ourselves.
>Democrats lost because they keep triangulating and trying to appeal to centrist Republicans who either don't exist, or would never vote for them regardless. If Harris had distinguished herself from Biden by taking a firm stance against the Palestinian genocide - which was the single issue much of her base cared about - she would have won.
Everyone thinks that their one particular issue was the crucial one, but all the data shows that the issues that actually mattered were A) inflation and B) the border / immigration / crime / perception of disorder.
The only two Dem Senators that underperformed Harris were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The rest of the downballot had been running hard centrist on the border for much longer and with less baggage, and guess what, they did better.
The Democrats loss fair and square. They should have spoken up a lot sooner. Everyone on the inside knew that Biden was incompetent. If they had a real primary would Kamala ever have been the nominee?
The Democrats lost strongholds like Miami of all places. The dumbest thing they did was go against the tech industry who have always been their biggest supporters. Would Republicans go after Evangelical Christians or the NRA?
So that was there whole platform - “we aren’t Trump”?
Do you think the population got more ignorant in 4 years? This is all on the DNC and Biden. Biden should have either voluntarily not run or stronger Democrats should have had a primary and crucified him.
The DNC lied to the American public for years. They knew that Biden wasn’t all there. They basically tried to do a “Weekend with Bernie” on them.
Not to mention that strategically for the first time in modern history they had the new industry titans in their back pocket - BigTech - and threw them under the bus.
The American population doesn’t care about going after BigTech like HN does.
I long maintained that there should be a minimum level of 'something' required to vote. It used to be land, but anything that effectively makes one have a stake in the country would do. If possible, would you accept a restriction on the right to vote based on such a criterion?
Democrats lose due to significant ignorance in the population and successful propaganda by hostile entities. It's not an accident that the reddest states at the least educated and least literate. If you doubt that I'm happy to support the claim, but I think we both know it's true.
> They are completely out of touch with what the mainstream wants.
Democrats are the only party actually offering to give the majority what they want, but due to ignorance and propaganda the majority have become emotionally hostile to the means necessary to accomplish implementing what they want.
Despite Trump's promises that gullible desperate people fell for, his policies are likely to make things much harder for hid voters and not only not give them what they want, but give them what they explicitly don't want. Well, they'll still get bigoted policies, at least.
> Any other Democrat could have distanced themselves from Biden. But his own VP couldn’t.
There should have been no reason to. Trump is a rapist felon who literally advocated for injecting leach as a cure to a pandemic. That people voted for him at all shows just how bad things are.
Democracy can't function with such a gullible population. At the least I have a front row ticket to the fall of a modern empire though. That's something.
<< Democrats are the only party actually offering to give the majority what they want
<< Democracy can't function with such a gullible population.
I am trying to be charitable in my interpretation, but you are not making it easy. One could easily argue that given that Trump won, majority got what they want already. Please tell me that you understand what I am telling you now. I did manage to hear some people drawing appropriate conclusions from this cycle, but I am not certain you did.
<< Trump is a rapist felon who literally advocated for injecting leach as a cure to a pandemic.
Yeah.. a felony in this case being the equivalent of a parking ticket in business; not to mention national level politics. It is hard for me understand why people have a hard time grasping that and/or why this was not a useful label for this election cycle. Hell, the moves taken ( including mug shot ) did the exact opposite of the desired effect.
<< At the least I have a front row ticket to the fall of a modern empire though. That's something.
> Yes, because of how ignorant much of the population is, correlating lower grocery prices with whoever was in office at the time.
Get off your high horse. If you lose the election, you are the ignorant. The democrats lost because they over-estimated their hand and under-estimated the intelligence of the general populace.
The democrats were in a position of power. The only thing you need to do is to not screw up.
They lost because 49.9% of voters believed inflation would be decreased by tariffs and all the money FEMA spent on North Carolina was a lie. Among other things, this was very much a “we have a different truth to offer” election.
To say that Miami was a democratic stronghold is not really accurate. They've leaned Democrat recently, but the margins haven't been that high, and they've been decreasing for a number of elections now.
