stopdropandprole

i think tik tok might be in a position where they must sell in order to continue serving content to American users

https://apnews.com/article/trump-tiktok-china-bytedance-social-media-tariffs-665e46fd5bb555e97c4d7301e07230df

The order was announced as White House officials believed they were nearing a deal for the app’s operations to be spun off into a new company based in the U.S. and owned and operated by a majority of American investors,

the extension only happened because after the TikTok CEO, Shou Chew, threw a big party for right wing influencers during Trump’s record breaking $200M bribe acceptance party inauguration, Trump mysteriously halted the order (despite being signed into law) to ban the app.

from the article:

Top TikTok executives reportedly rubbed shoulders with American tech leaders and handed out business cards at an elite pre-inauguration donor event on Sunday featuring members of the Trump administration, as the app’s future in the U.S. remains uncertain.

Tiktok executives including CEO Shou Chew and vice president Michael Beckerman were reportedly on hand at the event, which President Donald and First Lady Melania Trump hosted at the National Building Museum in Washington. They joined a reported guestlist including Vice President JD Vance, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and conservative megadonor Miriam Adelson.

geeze, it’s almost like the tech oligarchs told Trump to pause the ban until they could negotiate a way to profit more from acquisition of TikTok (or a newly created US based subsidiary that Bezos is trying to invest in) than by outright banning users access to it, cold turkey.

our only hope at this point is probably

1. people globally deciding to have fewer and fewer children due to rapidly deteriorating standards of living paired with rising inequality (no one will be able to afford kids let alone a home or healthcare)

2. perpetual multi-crises and climate catastrophes disrupting supply chains and halting economic growth/consumption

3. global economic collapse due to war, mass refugee migration, reshaping of national borders in a race to extract dwindling reserves of precious minerals and ore, also resulting in plummeting per capita consumption and/or birthrate

4. all of the above in a self-reinforcing feedback loop

… fuck, this was supposed to be the hopeful scenario. smh, we live in interesting times.