So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN. And now Ellison is going to take over TikTok.
Paramount(being run by Larry Ellison's son) is looking to install the pro-israel-propagandist who has variously masqueraded as a liberal, a conservative and anti-woke free-speech champion, Bari Weiss[1] as CBS's editor-in-chief or co-president[2]. It also bears mentioning that Ellison is a life-long zionist, friend of the IDF and close personal friend of Netanyahu to whom he even offered a post at Oracle.[3]
This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.
David Ellison is Larry Ellison's son, and Larry Ellison spent $6 billion on the Paramount deal. It's not really a stretch to imagine that the father might have some influence on the resulting operation. (According to a cursory web search, on paper Larry Ellison now has a 35.5% voting interest and David Ellison has a 64.5% voting interest.)
I agree it’s not that big of a stretch, but it elevates the discussion when you communicate what part of your argument is objectively correct vs a stretch.
My knee-jerk reaction was to upvote the comment, but that’s how Ecco chambers get increasingly divorced from reality.
I know it’s pretty common here for people to create throwaway accounts so they can support themselves.
I have seen it multiple times. I’ve even caught people out.
Yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy. I’m not saying conspiracies don’t exist. I’m saying that you don’t layer them on top of each other if you’re trying to convince people that they could be true.
I guarantee that this will also get downvoted by the way, because now I have offended someone and they will downvote me with all of their accounts. And the more comments that I have the more opportunity they have to downvote me. So this is my last comment.
I don't believe for a second that you're being downvoted by someone with multiple accounts. You're being downvoted because you tried to frame a lukewarm observation (that brought receipts!) as some insane conspiratorial hot take in a really transparent manner, while simultaneously misrepresenting it (zionists vs jews) and ridiculing it (flat earth comparison).
The only thing I had said was “I downvoted because this sounds like you’re drinking the kool-aid a bit much” and the reaction has been “you are a bad person! you are making knowingly bbad faith arguments, the parent is totally right! the moon is cheese” - it totally sounds crazy, it could be true, but the “receipts” (if you can call it that?) paint multiple narratives not only the one you like.
For all I know, genuinely, the parent could be right, but when you start with “the nepo-baby who tried to present himself a certain way on purpose to help Israel” it sounds a bit too convenient.
We're no longer accepting this tripe as sane discourse. Anyone of sound mind has seen, over the past 3 years, that Israel's securocrats and Zionists in America and Europe shut down any views that's remotely critical of Israel by influencing the media. It's also as clear as daylight that TikTok's problems started after they gave the world a window into Israel's atrocities in occupied Palestine. Ellison is a self-confessed Zionist.
Whether it's Bari Weiss abetting genocide against Palestinians, Silicon Valley purging anyone who questions it, or actively building the weapons that enable it, you can't glue people's eyes shut or force them not to believe their lying eyes with cries of antisemitism, conspiracy, etc.
> that Israel's securocrats and Zionists in America and Europe shut down any views that's remotely critical of Israel by influencing the media
You are literally here offering criticism. There is criticism to be found all over the press, even through outlets that are otherwise supportive of Israel, if you care to look. Enough with conspiracy bullshit.
> This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.
Again? People should be talking about the hostile take-over currently in progress and how it is getting exponentially worse. But the billionaire mouthpieces gave everyone a shiny new inconsequential talking point and no one cares about anything that matters.
In 2020, 22.4% of the US population voted for Trump. In 2024, 22.7% of the population voted for Trump. I hate how people draw drastic conclusions regarding what the American people want based off the shift of less than half a percentage point of the population.
They're going to send thugs into businesses demanding to see if any of their employees are secretly using TikTok on company time, then demand the business buy a million dollar corporate license.
Didn't expect to see the USA employing press censors in my lifetime but here we are.
In Brazil during the dictatorship it was common for newspapers to print cooking recipes in place of censored articles, now I'm waiting to see if media in the USA has the balls to play the malicious compliance game... I guess I won't see it since money is basically God in America.
One could argue they're not the same, but there has been TV broadcast censors for decades in the US. They were still least following somewhat defined laws though.
TikTok dealt a serious blow to the Western consensus manufacturing apparatus. We saw that with Gaza especially. This deal is a step towards taking back control.
Maybe these crypto-zealots who scream about decentralization will actually try and build a thriving decentralized media instead of pumping and dumping shitcoins?
This. I think people in general misunderstand the allure of power and the means to maintain it. Power centers in US are drooling at the opportunity to do what China has done in terms of controlling discourse and language. The interesting thing is that they all assume that this particular measure of control would never be turned against them.
edit: Adjusted weapon to 'measure of control'. I accept people are a little too happy to overreact lately.
> We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk.
Except China doesn't actually serve its people. Things are way more cut-throat there, with much less safety net. The Chinese government sees workers as grist for the mill, not something to be cared for.
There is a significant difference in a population of 70 million educated workers who need to be maintained for high performance and 400 million low skill workers who are highly replaceable.
I am trying to make no judgement here, just explaining then 'motivational environment'
This math of course is in flux to a degree we haven't seen in maybe 1000+ years though right now.
> Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US.
The Chinese rural population still isn't eligible for local equivalent of social security in their old age (that's only for city folks), and IIRC there was a huge unwillingness to provide financial assistance to individuals during COVID.
US users are today 21 of the 49 TikTok accounts with the most followers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...> (not including TikTok itself). When the Trump administration came close to forcing a divestment/shutdown on TikTok in 2020,[1] Americans were 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue.
[1] And boy, do Democrats who shouted Orange Man Bad back then now wish they had supported the move
I'm curious how bad the misinformation type stuff will be.
It's bad everywhere, but I found TikTok to be the absolute worst. Not even just fake news political stuff where I can guess the motivation (still bad), but just basic everyday tips and tricks, local users describing news events. I've found it to be so much worse on tiktok.
Other platforms there seems to be "more" intent by creators to provide somewhat consistent / factual content. Tiktok often feels to me like content accuracy / quality isn't a concern for most creators.
Short form video is basically worthless outside of comedy and cute animal videos. The format does not allow enough information to determine whether the information provided is accurate or not, for videos that have facts in them. Every time I watch a short form video I feel an overwhelming urge not to trust what I saw and verify it elsewhere, now I just don’t want short form videos at all.
I think it's bad news if the US government owns Tiktok data rather than the Chinese government.
Chinese government won't prosecute me. US government might.
The State Department also said it would crack down on non-citizens who have made posts making light of the shooting.
“In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country. I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted on Thursday. “Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the @StateDept can protect the American people.” [0]
Americans prefer that Tiktok data lives within the jurisdiction of the US government, why? If you don't think Palantir is putting together a centralized database to survey individual Americans for the US government, you are crazy. There will be real consequences where if they don't like what you're saying or doing, they will come after you some how.
I'd much rather have my data based in China.
I've come across at least one businessman who refuses to use anything but a Chinese phone he bought in china, with chinese sim card and chinese apps, for that exact reason.
This seems like a premature reaction. The Trump administration has been known to anchor to extreme positions as a negotiation tactic.
Given the complexity of forced platform migrations (user data transfer, algorithm preservation, creator monetization continuity), and the technical/legal hurdles involved, I suspect we're seeing opening moves in a broader negotiation rather than a final outcome.
Let's all be patient and wait to see how this plays out before assuming users will actually have to migrate to a completely new app with new ownership.
The party of laissez-faire capitalism is now into "let's interfere", with government ownership, presence within companies and of course, dropping the hammer on "unpatriotic" speech, a kind of Amended First Amendment.
10 Small Steps: Executing the Fascist Playbook [0]
>A new company will be created to operate TikTok, with U.S. investors holding a roughly 80% stake and Chinese shareholders owning the rest, the report said.
It would've been better for the mental health of our country if it had been banned (along with Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts).
I doubt it. Oracle has a booming datacenter and cloud business right now. Their role is to host the data in a US jurisdiction, which they can do. It won’t affect the success or failure of TikTok. And frankly it won’t give TikTok users privacy since the data can still be accessed by software written by Chinese employees.
Yea, I’m sure the sociopaths at oracle have the fingers on the pulse of the younger generations. They’re just going to up the censorship and enshittfy it resulting in its users moving on the next new thing.
>If you are successful the newUSA will force you to divest what you've build against your will.
Besides what bluecalm said, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place.
Conversely, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, American would not have to fear a hostile Chinese government silently gathering data on American users, or a company repeatedly shown to be lying about using its app to do so.
Because it's the biggest market. Half of my customers are American. I have never even marketed anything to them. It's the biggest, best market with the most people willing to spend the most money.
Similarly, when the Trump administration came close to forcing a divestment/shutdown on TikTok in 2020, Americans were 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue. Of the top 50 most-followed accounts <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...>, 21 of 49 (not including TikTok itself) are American.
So finally all that pesky people saying that their own government is funding a brutal genocide with their tax dollars will be banned.
American media is one of the most thightly controlled and censored in the world. They need to carefully control the media to maintain the ilusion of "moral superiority" that is used to justify foreign interventions.
Sometimes I'm truly baffled over the stories that the HN readership ends up mostly ignoring. When I heard about this news elsewhere, I came here fully expecting this to be high on the front page with hundreds of comments discussing it. For comparison's sake, the story about Tiktok shutting down[1] and then restoring service[2] in the US each had over 2500 comments. Meanwhile, 3 hours after this story was posted, this is the 14th comment.
Frustratingly I can't recall specific examples, but in the past year there have been several major discussion-worthy tech stories I've seen on The Verge or wherever, and I come to HN a couple hours later and there's either literally nothing or the post got zero interaction. Strange!
My theory is that it highly depends on the few random people who view New posts and if they upvote/comment.
The exact same post with the exact same title can either be completely ignored with no comments and no upvotes or be the top post with 500 upvotes and 300 comments.
Not really news in this state. Because other than a few more details here it's not any different than the story from last week (which we knew Oracle was in the mix etc). The deal isn't final.
It is funny to say this as if there was some past story on here that everyone saw. In the last month, the story about a potential TikTok deal with the most engagement maxed out at 3 comments and 17 points[1]. This is probably the most important news in the social media sphere since Musk bought Twitter and the HN audience doesn't care about it until contracts are signed? That's pretty unbelievable.
Depends. Better as a word is a little too wide to interpret accurately without some additional information to go on. For example, if you look at my post history, you will know that I am not too keen on social media in general. From that perspective, it could be interpreted as a win. And yet, I think most of us here recognize the development as a whole is not 'good' ( since we are going with generic, not-easily-defined verbiage ).
I hope this is sounding alarm bells for everyone else as much as me.
Larry's son buys Paramount (CBS) and promptly fires Stephen Colbert, a money making machine who was leading his timeslot as what was, in hindsight, a clear message to everyone that nobody is safe if they don't fall in line.
Larry now gets TikTok, which like it or not is the most influential social media platform among today's youth.
Both are Trump fanatics. This is the next stage in the Ailes playbook that has already gone too far in ruining the American experiment.
What does this “stake” get America at all? Will they be able to change the algorithms or censorship or amplification on TikTok? The point of the ban was to avoid national security issues from having an adversarial state (China) controlling speech in America. Banning it entirely is the best way to avoid these problems.
As a reminder, TikTok forces staff to sign pledges to support China’s political system in order to work there and get stock awards:
>Banning it entirely is the best way to avoid these problems.
Too popular to ban. Political constraints.
>Will they be able to change the algorithms or censorship or amplification on TikTok?
"An Asia-based investor of ByteDance said the new US TikTok entity would use at least part of the Chinese algorithm but train it in the US on American user data."
________________
I'm not sure you're looking at this the right way though. This isn't some conclusion of a search for the optimal way to address the situation (which would probably be an actual digital privacy framework). The ban couldn't go through because the app was too popular and Trump liked the attention he was getting on it. So if the ban has to be backed out of, what's the second best option? A "deal" of course, from the world's best deal maker. It's no more complicated than that.
The Intel stake is the same - barely thought out. If you haven't noticed, this has been a common theme in many policy decisions lately.
>(which would probably be an actual digital privacy framework)
The ban wasn't executed on digital privacy concerns. The intent of the original ban was on digital privacy concerns, and that was shot down.
>The Intel stake is the same - barely thought out. If you haven't noticed, this has been a common theme in many policy decisions lately.
The TikTok ban passed under Biden, and the ball was kicked to Trump so he would deal with the political fallout. But the reason the ban passed the second time around was because China would not censor content about the Gaza genocide. The ban had no legs until October 7th and TikTok frustrated the US/Israel message that Hamas was homicidal terrorist group that spawned from no where.
What seems obvious is that, yes, the new TikTok, will fall in line with other US owned social media companies when it comes to spreading US propoganda.
So while Chinese social networks have "What happened in tiananmen square?", US social networks will have "Is Israel committing a genocide?".
“America” is an abstraction. It gets the people who will own the new entity something, and its gets the government decisionmakers something, and that’s, in practice, more important than what it gets “America”.
So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN. And now Ellison is going to take over TikTok.
Paramount(being run by Larry Ellison's son) is looking to install the pro-israel-propagandist who has variously masqueraded as a liberal, a conservative and anti-woke free-speech champion, Bari Weiss[1] as CBS's editor-in-chief or co-president[2]. It also bears mentioning that Ellison is a life-long zionist, friend of the IDF and close personal friend of Netanyahu to whom he even offered a post at Oracle.[3]
This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.
[1] - https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...
[2] - https://archive.is/20250916040811/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Ellison&old...
This is just crazy. No single person should have this amount of power, in particular if they have the moral integrity of Larry Ellison...
>moral integrity of Larry Ellison...
Don't anthropomorphize Larry Ellison
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728
It is two people here. David Ellison who took over Paramount is the son of Larry Ellison of Oracle.
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ellison
Durin I, Durin II…
Thank you for providing the media take over angle. I wish the people down voting you would explain why.
He’s got the wrong guy on the paramount deal. It’s David Ellison though they’re related:
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/paramount-warner-bros-disco...
David Ellison is Larry Ellison's son, and Larry Ellison spent $6 billion on the Paramount deal. It's not really a stretch to imagine that the father might have some influence on the resulting operation. (According to a cursory web search, on paper Larry Ellison now has a 35.5% voting interest and David Ellison has a 64.5% voting interest.)
I agree it’s not that big of a stretch, but it elevates the discussion when you communicate what part of your argument is objectively correct vs a stretch.
My knee-jerk reaction was to upvote the comment, but that’s how Ecco chambers get increasingly divorced from reality.
how do you know if anyone is downvoting a comment?
The text gets lighter in color and harder to read. People may come later and vote for it, darkening the text again.
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sounds extremely conspiracy minded
I know it’s pretty common here for people to create throwaway accounts so they can support themselves.
I have seen it multiple times. I’ve even caught people out.
Yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy. I’m not saying conspiracies don’t exist. I’m saying that you don’t layer them on top of each other if you’re trying to convince people that they could be true.
I guarantee that this will also get downvoted by the way, because now I have offended someone and they will downvote me with all of their accounts. And the more comments that I have the more opportunity they have to downvote me. So this is my last comment.
I don't believe for a second that you're being downvoted by someone with multiple accounts. You're being downvoted because you tried to frame a lukewarm observation (that brought receipts!) as some insane conspiratorial hot take in a really transparent manner, while simultaneously misrepresenting it (zionists vs jews) and ridiculing it (flat earth comparison).
The only thing I had said was “I downvoted because this sounds like you’re drinking the kool-aid a bit much” and the reaction has been “you are a bad person! you are making knowingly bbad faith arguments, the parent is totally right! the moon is cheese” - it totally sounds crazy, it could be true, but the “receipts” (if you can call it that?) paint multiple narratives not only the one you like.
For all I know, genuinely, the parent could be right, but when you start with “the nepo-baby who tried to present himself a certain way on purpose to help Israel” it sounds a bit too convenient.
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Enough with the tone policing. The original comment is accurate: Paramount seeks to install Zionist Bari Weiss. This is uncontroversially true.
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Can you explain the conspiracy?
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you must live under a rock
We're no longer accepting this tripe as sane discourse. Anyone of sound mind has seen, over the past 3 years, that Israel's securocrats and Zionists in America and Europe shut down any views that's remotely critical of Israel by influencing the media. It's also as clear as daylight that TikTok's problems started after they gave the world a window into Israel's atrocities in occupied Palestine. Ellison is a self-confessed Zionist.
Whether it's Bari Weiss abetting genocide against Palestinians, Silicon Valley purging anyone who questions it, or actively building the weapons that enable it, you can't glue people's eyes shut or force them not to believe their lying eyes with cries of antisemitism, conspiracy, etc.
> that Israel's securocrats and Zionists in America and Europe shut down any views that's remotely critical of Israel by influencing the media
You are literally here offering criticism. There is criticism to be found all over the press, even through outlets that are otherwise supportive of Israel, if you care to look. Enough with conspiracy bullshit.
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> So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN.
That's not Larry Ellison, it's his nepo baby David Ellison.
"hostile take-over of the American mind"
You mean, to support Israel? Is that what this is about?
> This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.
Again? People should be talking about the hostile take-over currently in progress and how it is getting exponentially worse. But the billionaire mouthpieces gave everyone a shiny new inconsequential talking point and no one cares about anything that matters.
Don’t forget that the other proposed TikTok owner, Marc Andreeson, is also a raging genocidal Zionist.
Israelis really don’t want Americans to have nice things.
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This kind of hyperbole is both ridiculous and offensive.
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Oligarchs be oligarching
Nothing hostile about it. This is what the American people voted for.
In 2020, 22.4% of the US population voted for Trump. In 2024, 22.7% of the population voted for Trump. I hate how people draw drastic conclusions regarding what the American people want based off the shift of less than half a percentage point of the population.
Oracle is then going to mandate license fees from every user, together with 22% support fees with 8% increase every year.
They'll then rewrite TikTok in Java, and migrate to Oracle Database.
The Android .APK files are already Java.
IIRC, but I read the TikTok app is mostly WebViews, which was a design choice to help keep it functioning in the face of an App Store ban.
IIRC TikTok is built using their own framework, https://lynxjs.org/
I totally forgot about this... I might have to look at it again. Thank you.
To be fair, that doesn't mean they can't be re-written in Java.
They're going to send thugs into businesses demanding to see if any of their employees are secretly using TikTok on company time, then demand the business buy a million dollar corporate license.
Oracle owning TikTok is one of the most unintentionally funny things to ever happen.
It's like a 100 year old with hardware crypto wallet.
> Oracle owning TikTok is one of the most unintentionally funny things to ever happen.
I'm hopeful. With any luck they'll ruin TikTok and it will die, a satisfying result.
First they will start launching TikTok Enterprise.
An all-buzzwords compliant subscription based solution for enterprise and professional content creators.
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> one member designated by the US government.
Why does the board of TikTok need a gov member? Is Meta going to get a gov chaperone too? And Oracle surely needs one as well.
Is the gov putting out a call for board member civil servants? Like where does this person even come from?
Same reason they put a guy at CBS as a "bias monitor":
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-fcc-cbs-ne...
They want their guy to make sure things go their way / people say the "right" things.
Didn't expect to see the USA employing press censors in my lifetime but here we are.
In Brazil during the dictatorship it was common for newspapers to print cooking recipes in place of censored articles, now I'm waiting to see if media in the USA has the balls to play the malicious compliance game... I guess I won't see it since money is basically God in America.
One could argue they're not the same, but there has been TV broadcast censors for decades in the US. They were still least following somewhat defined laws though.
Oracle doesn’t need one.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32596903
What do you mean - the CCP has always had someone sit on the board of major companies… oh wait which country was this again?
TikTok dealt a serious blow to the Western consensus manufacturing apparatus. We saw that with Gaza especially. This deal is a step towards taking back control.
Maybe these crypto-zealots who scream about decentralization will actually try and build a thriving decentralized media instead of pumping and dumping shitcoins?
The problem is that it's hard to make these things popular.
There are several ActivityPub services that are pretty good and even have decent UXes, but they aren't super active.
A major issue is it's confusing and the funds are limited.
Reminds me of Yahoo buying Tumblr. Mismatched. Their best bet is to change little to nothing, but not sure the administration will let them.
I'm not an expert but this makes me think that it might time to turn off the screens and stop letting half-trillionaires decide what we look at.
>Current users of the app will be asked to shift to a new app
So it's just going to fade into obscurity then huh
so US users will be cut off from the rest of the world? Wow. Thats crazy.
TikTok in China is already cut off from the rest of the world. The US is just copying China's homework.
This. I think people in general misunderstand the allure of power and the means to maintain it. Power centers in US are drooling at the opportunity to do what China has done in terms of controlling discourse and language. The interesting thing is that they all assume that this particular measure of control would never be turned against them.
edit: Adjusted weapon to 'measure of control'. I accept people are a little too happy to overreact lately.
We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk.
> We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk.
Except China doesn't actually serve its people. Things are way more cut-throat there, with much less safety net. The Chinese government sees workers as grist for the mill, not something to be cared for.
> The Chinese government sees workers as grist for the mill, not something to be cared for.
I think this is universal, but perhaps China indeed may be worse.
There is a significant difference in a population of 70 million educated workers who need to be maintained for high performance and 400 million low skill workers who are highly replaceable.
I am trying to make no judgement here, just explaining then 'motivational environment'
This math of course is in flux to a degree we haven't seen in maybe 1000+ years though right now.
Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US.
> Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US.
The Chinese rural population still isn't eligible for local equivalent of social security in their old age (that's only for city folks), and IIRC there was a huge unwillingness to provide financial assistance to individuals during COVID.
A government-provided safety net is not an absolute good; you need to ask what holes are being filled.
Just because you have fewer full-body casts than someone who just got in a bad wreck, does not mean you are worse off.
"Democratic People's Republic of America"
Careful now, you don't want to accused of spreading hate speech
Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of global users ended up using the US app instead of TikTok.
You won’t get the option to do it through the app stores, so pretty much no one’s going to do it.
Why would anyone want to use OracleTok?
TikTok is banned in India. OracleTok might not be.. So that's a lot of potential users.
Same way everyone uses all the other US apps?
In this case we're talking about them actually having a choice.
Like Tiktok?
More like the other way around.
US users are today 21 of the 49 TikTok accounts with the most followers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...> (not including TikTok itself). When the Trump administration came close to forcing a divestment/shutdown on TikTok in 2020,[1] Americans were 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue.
[1] And boy, do Democrats who shouted Orange Man Bad back then now wish they had supported the move
I'm curious how bad the misinformation type stuff will be.
It's bad everywhere, but I found TikTok to be the absolute worst. Not even just fake news political stuff where I can guess the motivation (still bad), but just basic everyday tips and tricks, local users describing news events. I've found it to be so much worse on tiktok.
Other platforms there seems to be "more" intent by creators to provide somewhat consistent / factual content. Tiktok often feels to me like content accuracy / quality isn't a concern for most creators.
Short form video is basically worthless outside of comedy and cute animal videos. The format does not allow enough information to determine whether the information provided is accurate or not, for videos that have facts in them. Every time I watch a short form video I feel an overwhelming urge not to trust what I saw and verify it elsewhere, now I just don’t want short form videos at all.
I think it's bad news if the US government owns Tiktok data rather than the Chinese government.
Chinese government won't prosecute me. US government might.
Americans prefer that Tiktok data lives within the jurisdiction of the US government, why? If you don't think Palantir is putting together a centralized database to survey individual Americans for the US government, you are crazy. There will be real consequences where if they don't like what you're saying or doing, they will come after you some how. I'd much rather have my data based in China.[0]https://time.com/7316628/charlie-kirk-death-celebrations-soc...
I've come across at least one businessman who refuses to use anything but a Chinese phone he bought in china, with chinese sim card and chinese apps, for that exact reason.
When you reach the point of choosing the lesser evil, you might just as well uninstall TikTok.
It's not about owning the data, it's about controlling the message.
This would just make them go in a situationship.
Both are not compatible with each other in any way, but they are in a great deal, one they can't say no to.
This is where either one fails or sometimes both.
This seems like a premature reaction. The Trump administration has been known to anchor to extreme positions as a negotiation tactic.
Given the complexity of forced platform migrations (user data transfer, algorithm preservation, creator monetization continuity), and the technical/legal hurdles involved, I suspect we're seeing opening moves in a broader negotiation rather than a final outcome.
Let's all be patient and wait to see how this plays out before assuming users will actually have to migrate to a completely new app with new ownership.
I swear I saw all these exact comments yesterday - why are they showing that they were posted 10 minutes ago?
I believe the HN team is intentionally consolidating the thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45270431#45277295
The party of laissez-faire capitalism is now into "let's interfere", with government ownership, presence within companies and of course, dropping the hammer on "unpatriotic" speech, a kind of Amended First Amendment.
10 Small Steps: Executing the Fascist Playbook [0]
The Fascists’ Playbook [1]
[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/10-small-steps-executing-the-...
[1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/05/08/the-fascists-playboo...
So now we will split American TikTok users from those of the rest of the world? Madness.
>A new company will be created to operate TikTok, with U.S. investors holding a roughly 80% stake and Chinese shareholders owning the rest, the report said.
It would've been better for the mental health of our country if it had been banned (along with Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts).
The good news is, I can’t see “being owned by Oracle” as anything other than a death sentence.
I doubt it. Oracle has a booming datacenter and cloud business right now. Their role is to host the data in a US jurisdiction, which they can do. It won’t affect the success or failure of TikTok. And frankly it won’t give TikTok users privacy since the data can still be accessed by software written by Chinese employees.
> since the data can still be accessed by software written by Chinese employees.
Source?
Yea, I’m sure the sociopaths at oracle have the fingers on the pulse of the younger generations. They’re just going to up the censorship and enshittfy it resulting in its users moving on the next new thing.
LawyerTok
Why would any company want to operate in America, sell to Americans or onboard American users anymore?
If you're not successful you just wasted a ton of time and money.
If you are successful the newUSA will force you to divest what you've build against your will.
Doesn't sound like a country worth investing in anymore.
>If you are successful the newUSA will force you to divest what you've build against your will.
Besides what bluecalm said, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place.
Conversely, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, American would not have to fear a hostile Chinese government silently gathering data on American users, or a company repeatedly shown to be lying about using its app to do so.
Because it's the biggest market. Half of my customers are American. I have never even marketed anything to them. It's the biggest, best market with the most people willing to spend the most money.
Similarly, when the Trump administration came close to forcing a divestment/shutdown on TikTok in 2020, Americans were 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue. Of the top 50 most-followed accounts <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...>, 21 of 49 (not including TikTok itself) are American.
So finally all that pesky people saying that their own government is funding a brutal genocide with their tax dollars will be banned.
American media is one of the most thightly controlled and censored in the world. They need to carefully control the media to maintain the ilusion of "moral superiority" that is used to justify foreign interventions.
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Sometimes I'm truly baffled over the stories that the HN readership ends up mostly ignoring. When I heard about this news elsewhere, I came here fully expecting this to be high on the front page with hundreds of comments discussing it. For comparison's sake, the story about Tiktok shutting down[1] and then restoring service[2] in the US each had over 2500 comments. Meanwhile, 3 hours after this story was posted, this is the 14th comment.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753396
[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759336
Frustratingly I can't recall specific examples, but in the past year there have been several major discussion-worthy tech stories I've seen on The Verge or wherever, and I come to HN a couple hours later and there's either literally nothing or the post got zero interaction. Strange!
My theory is that it highly depends on the few random people who view New posts and if they upvote/comment.
The exact same post with the exact same title can either be completely ignored with no comments and no upvotes or be the top post with 500 upvotes and 300 comments.
Exactly. Depending on the traffic in newest, stories can slip in disappear in the flow
There's too much randomness to expect any consistency.
Sometimes we re-up things for that reason (basically the second-chance pool mechanism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). I've done that with this one.
Not really news in this state. Because other than a few more details here it's not any different than the story from last week (which we knew Oracle was in the mix etc). The deal isn't final.
It is funny to say this as if there was some past story on here that everyone saw. In the last month, the story about a potential TikTok deal with the most engagement maxed out at 3 comments and 17 points[1]. This is probably the most important news in the social media sphere since Musk bought Twitter and the HN audience doesn't care about it until contracts are signed? That's pretty unbelievable.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45249430
details, NO algorythm, Trumpy, China, Money, Twitteresque user base revolt....or worse so it's very much as you state, non final
The most terrifying thing is there will be a trump-government representative in the governing body.
We are truly looking at 1984 as a blueprint not a warning.
You can just not use TikTok.
That doesn't diminish the impact it has on the rest of humanity, and by proxy, on me.
Wouldn't it be better if fewer people used TikTok, given negative impact of social media on individuals and society?
Wouldn't it be better if these investors lose money on this investment?
Depends. Better as a word is a little too wide to interpret accurately without some additional information to go on. For example, if you look at my post history, you will know that I am not too keen on social media in general. From that perspective, it could be interpreted as a win. And yet, I think most of us here recognize the development as a whole is not 'good' ( since we are going with generic, not-easily-defined verbiage ).
Yes but how likely do you think it is that that will happen?
I hope this is sounding alarm bells for everyone else as much as me.
Larry's son buys Paramount (CBS) and promptly fires Stephen Colbert, a money making machine who was leading his timeslot as what was, in hindsight, a clear message to everyone that nobody is safe if they don't fall in line.
Larry now gets TikTok, which like it or not is the most influential social media platform among today's youth.
Both are Trump fanatics. This is the next stage in the Ailes playbook that has already gone too far in ruining the American experiment.
> Stephen Colbert, a money making machine
Unfortunately not: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/business/media/stephen-co...
Stephen Colbert shutting down was explained otherwise when it happened.
[1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-colbert-got-canceled
Source: https://www.wsj.com/tech/details-emerge-on-u-s-china-tiktok-...
(which has a clearer title that's not that much different than days ago news: U.S. Investors, Trump Close In on TikTok Deal With China)
We changed the URL from https://www.reuters.com/world/china/oracle-silver-lake-conso... to the article that it points to.
dang why can't I downvote comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
what is this threshold?
One more reason to despise Oracle.
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I think this is a massively good step forward.
However, TikTok is still a brain rot slop machine and we would be right to question Ellison's motivations.
What does this “stake” get America at all? Will they be able to change the algorithms or censorship or amplification on TikTok? The point of the ban was to avoid national security issues from having an adversarial state (China) controlling speech in America. Banning it entirely is the best way to avoid these problems.
As a reminder, TikTok forces staff to sign pledges to support China’s political system in order to work there and get stock awards:
https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...
>Banning it entirely is the best way to avoid these problems.
Too popular to ban. Political constraints.
>Will they be able to change the algorithms or censorship or amplification on TikTok?
"An Asia-based investor of ByteDance said the new US TikTok entity would use at least part of the Chinese algorithm but train it in the US on American user data."
________________
I'm not sure you're looking at this the right way though. This isn't some conclusion of a search for the optimal way to address the situation (which would probably be an actual digital privacy framework). The ban couldn't go through because the app was too popular and Trump liked the attention he was getting on it. So if the ban has to be backed out of, what's the second best option? A "deal" of course, from the world's best deal maker. It's no more complicated than that.
The Intel stake is the same - barely thought out. If you haven't noticed, this has been a common theme in many policy decisions lately.
>(which would probably be an actual digital privacy framework)
The ban wasn't executed on digital privacy concerns. The intent of the original ban was on digital privacy concerns, and that was shot down.
>The Intel stake is the same - barely thought out. If you haven't noticed, this has been a common theme in many policy decisions lately.
The TikTok ban passed under Biden, and the ball was kicked to Trump so he would deal with the political fallout. But the reason the ban passed the second time around was because China would not censor content about the Gaza genocide. The ban had no legs until October 7th and TikTok frustrated the US/Israel message that Hamas was homicidal terrorist group that spawned from no where.
What seems obvious is that, yes, the new TikTok, will fall in line with other US owned social media companies when it comes to spreading US propoganda.
So while Chinese social networks have "What happened in tiananmen square?", US social networks will have "Is Israel committing a genocide?".
> What does this “stake” get America at all?
“America” is an abstraction. It gets the people who will own the new entity something, and its gets the government decisionmakers something, and that’s, in practice, more important than what it gets “America”.