from the prepare-for-things-to-get-dumber dept
We’ve noted more times than I can’t count that the push to ban TikTok was never really about protecting American privacy. If that were true, we would pass a real privacy law and craft serious penalties for companies and executives that play fast and loose with sensitive American data.
It was never really about propaganda. If that were true, we’d take aim at the extremely well funded authoritarian propaganda machine and engage in content moderation of race-baiting political propaganda that’s filling the brains of young American men with pudding and hate.
Banning TikTok was never really about national security. If that were true, we wouldn’t be dismantling our cybersecurity regulators, hosting sensitive military chats over Signal with journalists, voting to cement utterly incompetent knobs in unaccountable roles across military intelligence, and letting run-amok data brokers sell personal info to global governments (including our own).
The push to Facebook was about ego, money, and information control. Ego; Trump got mad at TikTok videos making fun of his small crowd sizes. Money: Facebook worked tirelessly to spread bogus moral panics about TikTok in order to kill off a competitor they couldn’t out-innovate. Control: the GOP wants to own TikTok so they can ensure it’s friendly to an essential cornerstone of party power — their propaganda.
Enter the fine folks at (Trump friendly) Andreesen Horowitz, who are emerging as a late-stage bidder for a big chunk of whatever winds up being left of TikTok alongside (Trump friendly) Oracle:
“US venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz is in talks to invest in social media platform TikTok as part of an effort led by Donald Trump to wrest control of the popular video app from its Chinese owners. The venture capital group, whose co-founder Marc Andreessen is a vocal supporter of the US president, is in talks to add new outside investment that will buy out TikTok’s Chinese investors, as part of a bid led by Oracle and other American investors to carve it out of its parent company ByteDance.”
Thanks to America’s silly and performative ban, ByteDance has until April 5 to sell TikTok to non-U.S. controlled companies. There’s still no word on what a finalized deal will look like, and ByteDance has had strong reservations in including the company’s engagement algorithms as part of any deal.
We’ve kind of come full circle here. If you recall, Trump’s big plan during his first term was to transfer ownership of TikTok to right wing-friendly companies Oracle and Walmart. That plan ultimately fell apart, and Trump has subsequently waffled back and forth on what to do, in part because he was trying to appease right wing billionaire donor and ByteDance investor Jeffrey Yass.
Marc Andreessen, who has become increasingly incoherent as he prostrates himself and his empire to King Dingus, clearly wants TikTok ad money, but he also wants information control. Andreessen is already on the board of Meta and one of the investors in Elon’s takeover of Twitter. If he grabs a large stake in TikTok, an overt authoritarian will have meaningful power over the country’s three biggest social media platforms. That is, you know, bad for a long list of reasons that should be obvious.
Other suitors may not be much better. As I was writing this, news emerged that Jeff Bezos (the guy currently making the Washington Post more friendly to authoritarian ideology and hostile to anyone who disagrees) is also putting in a bid for Amazon to acquire TikTok. If his bumbling at WAPO is any indication, his ownership of TikTok wouldn’t be much better for free expression.
Modern U.S. authoritarians don’t want major popular tech platforms engaging in content moderation of right wing propaganda and disinformation, a cornerstone of Trump power (since their actual policies, like letting shitty corporations do whatever they want, dismantling civil and labor rights, and giving billionaires more tax cuts, are broadly unpopular amongst the plebs).
But the TikTok ban really can’t be separated by the broader GOP quest to dominate the entirety of modern media. You might recall how the GOP spent years successfully bullying tech companies into going soft on race-baiting right wing propaganda, often under the pretense they were doing serious adult business on antitrust reform or trying to combat (completely bogus) “censorship” of Conservative ideologies.
There was, if you recall, a whole three year news cycle where major news outlets propped up the myth that this wasn’t about control, propaganda, and forcing unpopular right wing policies down everybody’s throat, it was about reining in corporate power and “holding big tech accountable.” These GOP efforts were, time and time again, portrayed in the press as serious, adult, good faith policymaking.
A few years later and everything is completely fucked, regulators are either being stripped for parts or being used to harass companies for not being racist enough, all our biggest tech companies have folded on moderating right wing racism, right wing propaganda is worse than ever, journalism is dying, civil rights and free speech face existential threats, and federal corporate oversight is effectively dead.
Really a great job on all fronts, from policymakers to U.S. journalism. Everybody really nailed it.
TikTok always heavily trafficked in a lot of right wing engagement bait because, as an amoral algorithmic engagement machine, they like to shovel more of the stuff you already like your direction. But at the same time, I personally found I was more likely to find left wing content on TikTok than I would on, say, Facebook’s reels. Ultimately, TikTok has veered even harder right as it tried to appease U.S. authoritarians.
However right wing friendly you think TikTok is now, it will be notably worse under Oracle and Andreessen Horowitz, and far more likely to take action against content and creators Trumpism doesn’t like. All in service to authoritarian control, and chasing where the real money is in America media right now: telling young angry men all of their worst lizard-brained impulses are correct.
Filed Under: authoritarian, competition, content moderation, corruption, disinformation, donald trump, jeff bezos, marc andreessen, propaganda, social media, tiktok ban
Companies: amazon, andreessen horowitz, bytedance, oracle, tiktok
