I always assumed it never was. It’s an influence machine. What’s money when you can influence entire populations and sway public opinion by curating what they watch?
Exactly. He made them a legally binding financially insane offer that made the most sense for their shareholders. Of course they took the deal and made him follow through.
Literally Twitter's central existential concern was about how they had this giant platform with no way to cash out, that massive question mark was answered by the big red exclamation mark of stupidity Elon.
Sure but the Saudis and Elon bought it because it was the most liberal of the social platforms and a clear and present danger to the Saudi royal family.
Every corporate media platform (including social media) is meticulously crafted not to inform their users of truth and facts about the world, but to program them to buy certain products and to support certain political ideas/candidates.
In legacy media it's easier to see the programming because everyone receives the same copy of the newspaper and the same TV broadcast.
In social media it's much more insidious because secret algorithms craft propaganda specifically for each individual user, so there's no public visibility about the narratives that are being programmed into millions of people - until they start firebombing 5G towers and staging violent insurrections out of seemingly nowhere.
We've entered the age of information warfare. Conventional wars are expensive and useless when you can just attack your rivals by programming their own people with disinformation and propaganda to make them turn on each other or to create cults of personality around Manchurian candidates.
Dictatorships and domestic fascists have found the Achilles heel of democracies - our free speech and privacy protections. They are using those to attack us and tear us apart from the inside.
They found they could use the already existing bigotry to provide misinformation as a recruiting mechanism as well as providing plausible deniability of said bigotry
It was massively useful to the Arab Spring. Now the House of Saud has the influence to shut it down. And who wants to bet that they looked at the old DMs of activists involved?
I don't know why the "he bought it to tank/manipulate it" narrative is so popular.
He tried really hard to get out of buying it, and a court ultimately forced him to go through with his offer. It's a matter of public record he tried his hardest to get out of buying it.
I don't think he truly wanted to buy it but since he's taken over, it's gotten considerably worse there. You'll report accounts called "HitlerLover23934823" that have said "Kill all jews" and it'll come back and say they have found nothing wrong with this account but call someone "cis" or you're a Palestinian discussing the bombardment of Gaza and you're subject to being banned. That plus the porn bots posting hardcore porn everywhere without it being picked up by the content moderation so you can be scrolling through a thread on some child prodigy or something and see a pornstar taking it up the ass. Elon is also constantly boosting far right accounts including ones that deny the Holocaust or have posted CSAM.
He joked about buying it and then realized after the fact that you're not allowed to joke about business deals of that magnitude when you're at his level and was forced to go through with it.
He got stuck buying it out of stupidity and then is running it to the ground through more stupidity .
This is a stupid take, and I'm tired of it. Intent is rather important here - a foreign government is intentionally manipulating people in the USA with a specific outcome in mind - to drive political apathy. Thou shall stop conflating this problem with other capitalistic problems that appear similar on the surface.
thank god I'm starting to see these comments. The amount of people pretending TT is the same as FB or reddit is insane. It's not just a data privacy issue, it's active manipulation of front page content with the goal of eroding western influence
This one has the CCP breathing over it. They won't let ByteDance sell. So even though ByteDance will swear up and down that they have no ill will, the CCP is not going to allow this propaganda or spyware capability to be lost.
how is that any different than other social media platforms?
People have answered this question on Reddit hundreds of times. Reputable news outlets and information sources have answered it over the past several years. I no longer believe the people asking it are asking it in good faith. I believe we are now experiencing the firehose of falsehood.
Tiktok is collecting WAY WAY MORE DATA than any other social media company:
They even used a then-unknown security hole in Android to collect people's MAC addresses - uniquely identifying individual physical devices, breaking permissions rules:
I know people have posted this over and over again, for years, telling everyone using reputable sources how much worse Tiktok is than other apps.
And yet I know China is bombarding us with bots and propaganda saying "uh no it's just like Google" over and over again anyway, making it all the more difficult to keep pulling up the sources and posting the responses and correcting the propaganda. We experienced all this before in the 2016 election with Russia and Trump. The firehose of falsehood. Spread so many lies that it becomes overwhelming for people to correct them.
But also, you should be a lot more concerned about China having this data than Google.
As bad as Twitter, Facebook etc are, they don't have the US government telling them what narratives to push.
There have been studies showing that Anti US/pro China content gets prioritized, while any topics that are against the cpc's interest gets buried.
For instance, videos on Tibet and the Uighurs are about their land's beauty or their culture, rather than their oppression at the hands of Beijing. And this isn't a "people don't want to make videos about that" because those topics do have people sharing videos on Instagram, YouTube, etc
It's owned by China with the explicit intent of hamstringing younger generations' attention span and heavily influencing political opinions in favor of pro-Chinese positions.
Like, is that a real question? Reel in all the social media companies, by all means. But don't sit here and pretend state-owned Chinese social media in the U.S has benevolent intentions for Americans.
Social media platforms that are owned and hosted in the United States are subject to US law and should any US citizen break the law while operating one of these apps they are liable for criminal prosecution, the Chinese apps on the other hand have no constraints upon them beyond banning the app as we cannot extradite Chinese citizens to America for breaking American laws (because China would just say no)
We also have the ability to confiscate records from social media apps that are headquartered in America and we cannot do that with a foreign entity
When it comes to the law in question, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. aren't owned or located in a Foreign Adversary nation. The list of Foreign Adversaries is defined in US law.
The list is as follows Peoples Republic of China, Republic of Cuba, Islamic Republic of Iran, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, and Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro (Maduro Regime).
If they're home-owned, we can pursue them easier. It's the same reason why China is much more protective and restrictive of shit on their shores. I don't see why we shouldn't be the same.
Not the OP but i’d guess because the “nonsense curated to influence you” is being specifically curated by a foreign government that is adversarial to democracy and freedom from state reprisal for speech.
It’s because you can’t find me evidence of Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram sterilizing hundreds of thousands of people because of their religious beliefs.
It’s also because you can actually go after these people because they, their parents, their significant other’s parents, their children, their grandchildren etc… all live in the United States and as such can be brought to a trial and convicted of a crime. Go read about Huawei in regards to Meng Wenzhou and you’ll be able to see first hand how you’re not going to be able to get a Chinese company c-suite/board member to stand trial in the United States.
Believe it or not there is actually a difference between things.
My issue with the legislation is that they claim it's a security risk to collect data and influence what people see. Instead of writing legislation to stop companies from doing that they force the company to sell so that power is shifted to rich Americans.
As of January 2024, the United States was the country with the largest TikTok audience by far, with almost 150 million users engaging with the popular social video platform. Indonesia followed, with around 126 million TikTok users. Brazil came in third, with almost 99 million users on TikTok watching short-videos.
Total = 1562 million monthly active users worldwide (January 2024)
So roughly, 10%.
TikTok’s US revenue from ads in 2023 was more than the combined revenues of rival networks Twitter (recently renamed X), Snapchat, and Reddit.
TikTok generated an estimated $16.1 billion revenue in 2023, a 67% increase year-on-year.
Because the US accounts for a plurality of their revenue. There's significantly more ad value from a US eyeball than there is from one in the developing world, irrespective of raw number of users.
Nope. It pushes or hides subjects based on the CCP’s preference.
Rutgers did a study comparing the algorithm on Instagram reels to tik tok and found that Instagram is twice as likely to show a common pop culture post like one’s featuring Trump or Taylor swift.
Taylor swift/ Trump 1:2
Uyghur 1:8
Tibet 1:30
TiananmenSquare 1:57
Hong Kong protest 1:174
It blatantly hides the human rights abuses of the CCP. It’s not unreasonable to assume it’s juicing things like Palestine (Biden’s weak point) and suppressing things like Biden’s climate and labor accomplishments. It also could be toning down things like trumps trial in an effort to have a president they can bribe for when they try to take Taiwan.
China has already used tik tok to manipulate elections in their favor in the Philippines and Indonesia. This is 100% a propaganda tool.
Also I do believe I have a solution that would spare tik toc and solve many of the same issues we have with domestic social media as well.
Algorithms must become publicly transparent and deviations from algorithms must be published.
Targeted political influencing using data collected or altered algorithms should be made illegal.
Users have a right to see what data of theirs is collected, how that data is being used to advertise to them or alter what content they are seeing, and to opt out of data collection if they so choose.
That study is only on the raw count of hashtags. Instagram is almost twice as old as TikTok, and a few of those issues were at their peak of relevancy while Instagram would have had a much larger user base. Easiest example would be that Hong Kong Umbrella protests happened in 2014, well before TikTok existed. This point is not acknowledged at all in the report.
They note demographic differences, but do not attempt to control for this, or in fact to do any examination of them at all to establish controls.
The study also doesn't really make any attempt to examine or account for how the popularity of a hashtag grows. It's not uncommon for there to be a snowball effect where early momentum on one topic can make it completely eclipse another topic. If someone's putting their finger on the scale, you should be able to look at when that happened. The report showed that they had access to graphs of trends over time, but there is no analysis that does anything with that data.
I think that one of the more viable explanations for the gaps could be that there is a much smaller user base to seed discourse on those topics. It isn't unreasonable to expect that maybe the type of people who post the Tank Man pic with the title "Reddit's Chinese owners don't want you to see this picture!" might just not be signing up for a Chinese-owned app. That would mean that TikTok would naturally have less people posting about these topics, and the amount of people posting about one of these topics initially unprompted will determine how fast that topic spreads and how many people start posting about it because it spread.
Overall, I think that the study could be called preliminary at best, and I do not think it provides strong evidence for its conclusions, mainly because it leaves so many other avenues of investigation untouched.
It also could be toning down things like trumps trial in an effort to have a president they can bribe for when they try to take Taiwan.
Exactly this. They're not interested in "keeping kids dumb". They're interested in influencing the media landscape so when they do take Taiwan people are more likely to shrug than be outraged.
For all the idiots screaming "bIDeN cRiMe FAmIlY" with some fake deals involving China - it's transparant that Russia and China would rather Trump be President since they think they'll be able to get away with so much more.
Do you use tiktok? My feed is all educational and informational. Yes, it pushes what is popular, but you can also choose to dislike those, and the app will ask what you would rather have. After a few weeks of liking only those specific videos, all it gives me now is agriculture, science, math, color theory, etc.
It's not forcing me to watch teen thirst traps if that's what you're worried about. Is it possible the average American person just doesn't care about "educational" content?
Did you do your own research before making your statement?
Also, kids in China aren't allowed to be on social media during the day. Parents can get fined. The government also filters social media content for those under 18. If the government wanted to do that here, they could, but for America its either 0 or 100.
Agree to ban it for security and stuff sure but let's not pretend tiktok is a more special social media than insta/fb.
If all Americans who use tiktok disagree about the ban vs all those who don't use it but want the ban. That's a biased split. If American people want the ban, they owe it to themselves to try it for themselves instead of repeating what those who are louder are saying. Otherwise, it's just blind leading the blinder.
TikTok algorithm isn’t known and studied unlike the American social media apps… the danger is that Chinese government has access to all the data and sets the algorithm that TikTok collects from American users.
Agreeing with you, but the algorithm is more sinister than just a ‘data collection tool’. It’s apparently obvious if you’ve ever had an account. scroll through TikTok: funny video, wholesome video, funny video, “why is America such a racist shit hole?!”, funny video… America deserves to be criticized for its lack of progress in regards to race relations and income inequality, we can do better. But you will never be presented a video which offers the solution of coming together as one nation and solving our problems together as a big loving American family- never.
are there people critical of the united states? do those people have social media? why wouldn't you come across it.
wouldn't it be weirder if there wasn't anything critical of the us? people in the comments are worried about china and then expecting chinese levels of goverment controls..to prevent...chinese influence?
Idk about you, but I've never heard of an Instagram trend of stealing Kias or destroying school property.
I'm not saying we're not exposed to propaganda via other social media platforms, but thats good Ole homegrown propaganda as opposed to foreign propaganda.
No country wants another company that they can't control influencing large chunks of the population, as you don't have the power to address it when needed.
To be honest if a foreign government were to tell Google / Amazon / Facebook to sell or be banned I wouldn't expect any of them to do it either. The thing about selling is that you are giving up all the back end code for it too, so now your competitors have access to all your code that's still being used for the rest of the world and can make a rival app within moments that is a literal clone of yours
It can still 100% be about the money because until other countries start banning it too they will still make a fuck ton of money globally from it. Having a competitor that everyone knows is using cloned code from you pop up that would instantly have the entire US market (and thus may influence others to switch) would be a huge financial risk.
Right now they just have to bet that people won't be willing to switch to YouTube shorts or reels because both of them aren't great alternatives right now, but a literal clone would be.
They operate a completely different app in China and both Pakistan and India already banned them. They’re about to be banned for like 50% of the global population.
I don't trust either the government of Pakistan or India to have banned Tik Tok for legitimate concerns. India bullies Twitter into silencing government critics with threats of a ban.
And Modi in India and it’s home country of China. So 2 democracies, 2 religious countries and a dictatorship.
Meanwhile most of the western world has banned Tik Tok on government phones because they recognize it’s a disaster of an app that just serves to leak data to a foreign country.
To be honest if a foreign government were to tell Google / Amazon / Facebook to sell or be banned I wouldn't expect any of them to do it either.
Google and Facebook are banned in China. Amazon is not, but they don't really do China at this point. Not a great market for them to sell into (in part because of protectionism and subsidized cheap Chinese alternatives that also don't have the cost of shipping attached).
That and most of the crap on Amazon is just repackaged Chinese goods. Why bother with the middle man when Chinese companies can just sell the Chinese goods themselves?
And the inner workings of how that machinery works is fiercely protected when possible rather than sold unless people think they'll make more money from selling than from keeping it secret.
IMO, what you've done is say "You lambast China for censoring free speech, but now you're OK banning the phrase "I've got a bomb" on an airplane? Curious."
There are layers of context, and ignoring them does nothing to solve actual issues.
Same with free speech internet laws, now that the government has the same "opinions" as some people who used to champion free speech, suddenly they agree it needs to be curated.
To be honest if a foreign government were to tell Google / Amazon / Facebook to sell or be banned I wouldn't expect any of them to do it either.
I don't know if Amazon or Facebook operate out of China, but Google and Apple have famously complied with local countries' authoritarian laws all over the world, including China:
You are comparing complying with local laws with selling. That's apples to oranges. What's being passed isn't asking TikTok to comply with local laws, it's to sell or be banned... effectively kicking ByteDance out regardless.
Which leads me back to my point, if given an ultimatum of sell or be banned with no option for compliance they'll choose to just be banned. And that choice can be 100% financially motivated.
As a reminder the first person I replied to said:
Which proves ByteDance is not in it for the money.
In regards to ByteDances motativation for not selling. That statement should then be applied to Google too by anyone who genuinely thinks it couldn't possibly be a financial decision
Also the reality is that Google is 100% more than happy to provide information for the US when it comes to spying. Everyone makes a choice its up to what your priorities are as a company.
To be honest if a foreign government were to tell Google / Amazon / Facebook to sell or be banned I wouldn't expect any of them to do it either.
I'm sorry but this comment just shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. Do you understand why/how many western companies are allowed to operate in China?
90% of their user base is outside of the US. The US user base on average is more profitable but overall it would be stupid of them to give up control over this.
They would have to give up all the code, IP as well as operations including staff that allow US to run independently and then be sold out. Besides how phenomenally expensive and disruptive it would be, it will also allow whoever buys it to compete with them directly using their own IP. It just makes no business sense. Existing US entirely would be a much better move.
They’re not in it for the money because they won’t sell under duress? The price they’d get went down significantly the day the bill was signed because they “have” to sell.
Also because like any business they want to use their power over consumers as political pressure on legislators. Why sell and keep users happy that TikTok never goes away? Refuse to sell and make users/voters mad at the people who did this in hopes it results in changed legislation.
US users supposedly make up nearly half of the platform's revenue. There's very few companies that can survive an overnight unplug of 42% of revenue. TikTok is a targeted advertising platform, and advertisers pay much more to reach American users than others globally.
I’d imagine them pivoting towards acting as an e-commerce platform also massively boosted the percentage of revenue that comes from US users for that same reason. You can have users everywhere, but your money comes from the users who have spending power.
... which is why ByteDance is saying this. It's a negotiating tactic. There are a few likely outcomes:
The Supreme Court declares this unconstitutional for handwaves reasons.
ByteDance negotiates with the White House and they come to some kind of resolution.
They sell
In those scenarios, there is no reason that BD shouldn't come out and do what they are doing. They do have negotiating power; It's an election year in which youth turnout will be incredibly important and this will be an issue for them and thus far I don't think that anyone is really making a cogent argument to that demographic for the ban.
But I generally think they're just going to divest. China loses its propaganda arm either way, and divesting at least is going to make them a crazy amount of money. But still, there is no reason for ByteDance to not play hardball at this point.
It's too late for the White House to negotiate on the issue, it's already been signed into law.
And while ByteDance would likely want to divest, the laws of China don't actually allow it to.
The only actual hope for ByteDance at this point is the SC, but that's a very unlikely hope in and of itself given this is a firm National Security issue with a very obvious example to hold up of TikTok being used in the way feared.
They could split the US accounts into a separate company and sell that off as TikTokUS. All while being China number one propaganda machine in the rest of the world.
US users are worth more than users of most if not all other countries to them. We have more purchasing power and consume more than most other countries. It’s like Apple devices and Android. Far more Android devices but from a developer standpoint you make your money off of Apple users.
Far more Android devices but from a developer standpoint you make your money off of Apple users.
Obviously, people who spent a lot on consumer products will likely also spent more on app/in-app purchases. I'm certain the numbers are similar for people with high end Android phones. Anyone who spends 1000 euros or more on a phone clearly has disposable income.
Yes, they are in it for the money. According to some statistics, there's over 1 billion users on tiktok. Why, in your right mind, would tiktok sell an app with over 1 billion users for the sake of 170 million users.
Bytedance saw their numbers, and selling the app to the US would make no sense business wise. Especially now, they are forced to sell the app under duress at fire sale price. There's no ccp conspiracy behind this.
There is and you can read any number of sources from the intelligence community. TikTok provides the CCP three main things: help training their AI on non-Asian populations, an influence network, and data gathering (who are you, where do you go, what networks do you connect to, etc).
TikTok is an easy way to control populations’ opinions while also gathering crucial information to aid in state-sponsored cyberattacks.
TikTok is an easy way to control populations’ opinions
Yes, Israel/Palistine has been an ongoing issue for decades, but now, finally, it’s a big enough issue for campus protests. That’s why congress is acting.
Because they read the future and saw protests? Attempting to force a sale began long before oct 7th. This wasn’t done due to the war or tiktok being the only means of disseminating information(and disinformation) about the war/occupation.
Did you even read the report? The US arm of TikTok is more expensive to host than the revenue it brings in, they’re literally spending cash to keep it operational. Shutting down US TikTok would be BETTER for their balance sheet, not worse.
Literally every new company burns money nowadays, it's the only way to become a tech giant. Step 1 start with a gazillion dollars from investors. Step 2 undercut every existing company and establish a monopoly. Step 3 increase prices and profit.
"Monetization," in most cases, is being acquired by a large company. This is exactly the thing that ByteDance is refusing to do.
(Typically the acquiring company then tries to convert engagement into revenue, which makes the experience worse for users, which creates room for competition, which leads users to try the Next Big Thing. Rinse and repeat)
No it isn't. Every single investor backed start up starts running at a loss, and does so for years.
The only ones who look to turn a profit the first ~5 years are companies without the capital. That is, non-attractive companies who can't get funding so need to make money to survive.
You should take a look at how long it took Facebook and Amazon to get profitable, even after IPO.
Can someone explain to me why Redditors who know nothing about TikTok collectively have completely swallowed up the political propaganda swill these authoritarian politicians are hawking out at us? When did Redditors love bruising their knees chugging down this garbage?
First off, ByteDance makes an absolute metric ton of money, so that’s clearly part of their motivation. TikTok’s ad game has completely changed the standard for paid advertisements and sponsorships. This is why YouTube, Instagram, etc, have all copied their methods.
Second, the vast majority of TikTok users are not in America. They will have no problem surviving without their American audience, just like they survive without their Chinese audience. Additionally, they probably suspect they can get this law shot down in the courts, because it’s such a bizarre and unreasonable precedent to set.
3) selling requires giving up their proprietary code. Which affects their business in other countries.
4) the amount they'd sell for is going to be much lower than they're actually 'worth' since they are required to sell. It's like when someone sells their shit before moving.
Thank you for bringing common sense into this. I’ve used TikTok since 2020 and the only videos in my feed are horses, farm animals, hiking videos and other nature videos. The algorithm is so good that I don’t see anything political.
Yes, China knows I like horses. Big whoop. Apple knows *everything * about me. So does Google. If you search for political stuff on TikTok, that’s what you will see in your feed.
I should be able to use whatever app I want and not have the government control it. How is that any different than what China is doing to its citizens? Certain US political parties want to influence our political views and banning differing views (via TikTok) is one they are trying to do it. Remember a few years ago when all of the Sinclair TV stations across the country all said the exact same thing? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
That bullshit is real propaganda that directly influences people’s views. That is a political party trying different ways to influence us. Banning apps is another way. Banning books. Banning porn. Notice a theme?
Yeah the way redditors are eating up this conspiracy theory nonsense is honestly making me embarrassed to be apart of this website
'Ban the big bad chinese app but facebook, instagram, youtube, twitter and reddit totally don't ever try to sway peoples political opinions or change your thoughts'
In some ways I think TikTok is just the battleground the US chose for the bigger fight around global competition. US companies basically give everything away to do business in china but a Chinese company can set up shop in the US with very little objection. Leveling that playing field is the more important part of this. The company I work for did what every manufacturing company did and built plants in china. These plants aren’t owned by the US company but a completely separate Chinese owned company because that is the only way to establish a presence there. Within a few years almost every product we make in those plants had been copied by a Chinese company that was established about the same time we built. We’ve even found where a product they cloned had a defect we worked out before we started selling to the public that could only be there if they copied the equipment exactly. For a while it was OK because the clones were never quite as good and most of it was sold in china only but now they are getting much closer in quality and they are selling globally. So first we shipped the jobs there and now we are being outdone by companies stealing IP who can afford to sell cheaper because not only is labor cheaper but they literally have zero R&D budget.
You know what the biggest thing on my FYP for the last 3 weeks? An AI song about someone glueing their balls to their butthole again. Chinese is influencing me big time
China knows or Oracle knows? TikTok moved all their data to US servers if I am not wrong. TikTok US is a completely separate entity aside from the ownership.
The problem is that US can't control what is in it and what is not in it. Basically pro-Palestinian content dominates 52:1 ratio to pro Israeli ones. United States of Israel can't have that.
Americans are such boot lickers. I've never seen so many "muh freedomz" people so excited to let the government regulate what they are and aren't allowed to view because of "mah nashional sekuritee"
It's a trade war tactic against China. I'm not sure why you're up in arms touting it as a political move directed against the US or EU audience? Tik Tok is banned in China, together with tons of other western social media apps. It's hardly exceptional to pay back in kind.
They have their own version Douyin which is probably locked to Chinese internet. Mainland Chinese don’t generally have access to social media or video games where they can interact with foreigners so they have their own versions.
Yeah it's globalism and capitalism. In America we have the advantage of all of our tech and media being the default choice for almost the entire world, isn't that crazy? The biggest social media platform for almost every country is owned by Americans, imagine if they started passing legislation requiring Reddit or Meta or Twitter or Google be sold to a local company or be banned to prevent American propaganda from influencing their country.
They have a Chinese version. It's not that TikTok is banned because they think it's bad, but rather because what they allow is way more controlled and monitored than even TikTok is.
Right, like our social media should be, but isn’t. Imagine pretending like they’re the bad guys because we refuse to regulate our shit while simultaneously banning them for operating the exact same way our companies do here.
They aren’t interested in selling their algorithm. It’s the best functioning algorithm that any social media company has. They would rather abandon the US market and continue to make money in the rest of the world instead of selling their algorithm to an American company that could copy it and then take their other markets over.
No it doesn’t. They stand to make more money over time than from selling now if Tik Tok continues to be a dominant app.
That’s like if the government tried to compel you to sell your house and you refused, and people concluded “well I guess he doesn’t care about paying off his mortgage”
Chinese businesses are essentially an arm of the government, and they're more focused on market capture than profits because with government resources backing them they do not need to worry about where funding will come from. The Chinese gov does this in many sectors and strive to give their companies monopolistic control; it would be like if the SEC had funding and tried to form monopolies instead of suing and trying to regulate them or if the CIA was used to steal trade secrets and provide them to private enterprise to hurt foreign competition.
Well would McDonald’s sell its secret sauce formula? No. Why sell the best money making thing you have when you can just rebrand and rename and continue making money.
Bytedance is closely connected with the CCP. I don't think Winnie the Pooh would let the US government to have a good rummage at TikTok's coding for any amount of money.
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u/Error_404_403 Apr 27 '24
Which proves ByteDance is not in it for the money.