[kalverra]

Nate Silver did a nice write up on the probability and implications of all this here: https://open.substack.com/pub/natesilver/p/why-the-political...

When Biden passes this bill (which he said he would), I can only assume Dems will lose a large part of the younger voting demographic. If jot now, then 4 years from now. Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing, and Trump is already talking about how much he loves TikTok now.

[kalverra]

Agreed it's crazy, but it's a good political move. Everyone agrees we should ban it, but no one wants the blame because you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who will blindly hate you for it. So if you're the one who isn't in charge of the hard-but-good decision (or in Trump's case, if you don't particularly give much of a shit about it anyway) it's easy to just pick the most politically advantageous side.

[MisterBastahrd]

You forgot to switch accounts when you decided to agree with yourself.

[mandmandam]

> it's crazy

Yes.

> but it's a good political move

Domestically, maybe, and only in the short term. Internationally, not at all. It makes America look very weak and hypocritical, at a time when America can ill afford to look even worse.

> Everyone agrees we should ban it.

No, they don't. The media and political classes agree. That's not the same thing.

In reality less than half agree, last I checked [0].

> you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who will blindly hate you for it.

Blindly? Young people already hate Biden, and it's not because of TikTok. It's the two-faced support of mass murder, the economy, the inequality, the lies, the inflation, the oil drilling, the union attacks, the failure to deliver on campaign promises, etc. [1]

Blaming TikTok for that is just an easy wedge. There's nothing smart about it; it's cynical, divisive, and extremely stupid in the long term.

0 - https://www.reuters.com/technology/close-half-americans-favo...

1 - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/young-voters-...

[asd88]

> Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing

Didn’t they agree to sell it to Oracle back when Trump threatened to ban it?

[Jochim]

Don't know if they ever agreed to sell. IIRC they did partner with Oracle to host their infrastructure, as a way of showing that they were trying to allay US concerns.

[simpletone]

> Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing, and Trump is already talking about how much he loves TikTok now.

Which is insane because in 2020, Trump was the one trying to ban tiktok and Biden was defending it. Now the script flipped? In the meantime, all they've done in the past 5 years is give tiktok free advertisement.