Comment by kirklennon@kbin.social on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say

TikTok’s daily active users in the U.S. is also just about 5% of ByteDance’s DAUs worldwide, said one of the sources.

So much drama in the US over this but it’s apparently merely a money-losing afterthought for its owner.

It’s almost like making money is not the primary purpose of this website 🤔

Or … maybe the US isn’t the only country in the world?

Lmao yeah OK 👍. Name any other country.

I have a Geography degree lmao, but also, you’re an asshole. I don’t even know what you’re trying to accomplish with this comment.

he’s being sarcastic (im pretty sure)

Your sensing of humour is failing.

Didn’t seem like a joke to me, just seemed dismissive and rude. 🤷🏻‍♂️ People on this site frequently pull this 🤓oh yeah name a whatever🤓 shit unironically, so unless Lemmy gets a culture makeover I’m going to assume people are being assholes.

Fwiw I’m not American.

It’s not worth anything, your argument was that the US being such a small percentage of tiktoks userbase meant that the American market is only worthwhile to TikTok as a spying tool. Which does not make any sense.

I’m saying that tiktok has other markets in other countries, and the US only represents a small part of their global reach, so of course tiktok would only be a small percentage of their userbase.

I’ve always wondered what would happen if ByteDance sells TikTok for $5 to a US Citizen who frequently visits China for lavish vacations, and that US Citizen decide to keep all the algorithms the same.

If China has an ulterior motive with TIkTok, can’t they just find a US Citizen to carry out their ulterior motive?

No. The bill is quite specific about that.

Yeah same with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, fox news, CNN, News max, Msnbc and every single other media outlet by that logic. Apparently any company not owned Merica is propaganda too.

This means absolutely nothing.

How much of their advertising revenue comes from the US. They have shopping, I’ll bet the US buys the most.

China already has livestream shopping, it’s still relatively novel in the US. Bytedance has to compete with other local competitors in China, hating a nice external source of revenue in the US fuelling these Chinese battle is a huge boon.

I know the article says loss making app, but I bet a lot of money goes back to R&D creating the loss. They pay massive sums to get merchants to sell on their app for example.

This means absolutely nothing. How much of their advertising revenue comes from the US.

To quote the article again, “The U.S. accounted for about 25% of TikTok overall revenues last year, said a separate source with direct knowledge.” Honestly, I think that makes the case for shutting it down even stronger. TikTok isn’t in some growth-at-all-costs phase in the US. It’s likely near its peak potential userbase. If they haven’t been able to make it profitable by now, that doesn’t bode well for it ever becoming significantly profitable. Absent the legal issues, they think it’s still worth at least trying, but as it stands, it’s just a lot of money in and, just as quickly, out, with nothing to show for it at the end of the day.

You’re assuming its a profit-focused endeavor rather than a propaganda arm of the Chinese government.

I think it’s a privately-owned, profit-focused endeavor that is nevertheless beholden to the Chinese government and which the government wants to take as much advantage of as possible. Deep down, I’m certain that their sole goal is to make as much money for themselves as they possibly can. If they also need to exfiltrate some data and send it to the CCP, that’s just a necessary business expense.

Bro, Facebook facilitated a genocide, and this is who we want to buy TikTok? What action was taken against fb?

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

“US coRpOrAtiOn goOd!”

Not US corporation good, just US corporation = US controlled. This isn’t a morality play, it’s a national security play.

If TikTok’s purpose is to spread Chinese propaganda, can’t they just find a US Citizen that can run the website for them?

“Yeah, it’s my personal website where I exercise my 1st Amendment rights, also it has 100 million daily users and I happen to agree with China on a lot of things.” If a US Citizen were to say this, there would be nothing illegal about it I think?

We are talking about the same country right? The US committed the fucking Tuskegee experiments, MK ultra, and more recently Gitmo as a whole. If some dumbfuck wants to be a Chinese puppet I wouldnt put it past the feds to off em, shame they commited suicide by shooting themself in the back of the head twelve times with a shotgun.

Okay, but I’m more interested in intra-legal reasons this couldn’t be done.

I’m sure they could find 2, 3, or 3000 US Citizens who are willing to sell out to China, and then TikTok would be owned by US Citizens, but would still be doing what China wants.

Well China is refusing to divest, i.e. sell it to a US owner so clearly that’s not an option for them. If it was about the money they would have.

5% of customers driving 25% of revenue is a market you want to invest in.

Amazon wasn’t profitable for how many years? It’s the exact same play. Take a loss to create something artificially desirable, strangle the competition and lock up your walled garden, then crank the prices.

I’ve talked with merchants TikTok Shop recruited, TikTok was paying them a ton to sell there, eating their processing fees, their shipping costs, and paying for massive discounts to customers so they could juice their metrics.

They’re starting to crank up their fees this spring and summer.

Same with advertising, advertisers want to go to TikTok, but I’m sure most of the actual spend is happening outside the app on influencers. TikTok wants that pie too.

Taking a loss means nothing in this context

Also, hard to quantify how much of the popularity of tiktok is driven by US content globally, versus locally. You lose all that UGC is you cut out US

“Livestream shopping” is that like QVC or something?

Yeah, kinda

You watch TikTok, someone shills a product, you buu it with a button that pops up, or you click into their store to buy their cosmetics line.

Looks like they’re saying it’s running at a loss and is valued at $50b, so that Musk would end up buying it off their hands.

If they want Musks attention they should have valued it at $69b

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ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say(www.reuters.com)

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