News China might sell US TikTok to Musk

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6pack

Northstar
Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/...ok-us-musk-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-01-14/

Chinese officials are in preliminary talks about a potential option to sell TikTok's operations in the United States to billionaire Elon Musk, should the short-video app be unable to avoid an impending ban, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.
Beijing officials prefer that TikTok remains under the control of parent Bytedance, the report said, citing sources.
TikTok's U.S. operations could either be sold through a competitive process or an arrangement by the government, the report said, suggesting that the future of the app is no longer solely in ByteDance's control.

China's government has a "golden share" in ByteDance, which several members of Congress have said gives the government power over Tiktok.
Under one scenario, Musk's social media platform X would take control of TikTok U.S. and run the business together, the report said. Officials have yet to reach a consensus about how to proceed, according to Bloomberg News.
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Wow, anyone saw this coming?
https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/comments/1i0jsi5/the_chinese_app_red_note_is_now_2_on_the_app

:D
 
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www.themirror.com

Duolingo sees surge in Mandarin learners as TikTok ban sparks RedNote downloads

Popular language-learning app Duolingo reportedly saw a 216% spike in American learners of Mandarin Chinese amid the imminent ban of TikTok and mass migration to RedNote, another Chinese app
www.themirror.com www.themirror.com

Americans rush to learn Mandarin on Duolingo as TikTok ban looms and RedNote rises​

Popular language-learning app Duolingo reportedly saw a 216% spike in American learners of Mandarin Chinese amid the imminent ban of TikTok and mass migration to RedNote, another Chinese app
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:facepalm:
what a timeline...
 
www.cbsnews.com

Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, clears way for app to shut down in U.S. as soon as Sunday

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a new law that would lead to a ban of the social media platform TikTok.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com

In a statement provided to CBS News Friday evening, TikTok said that "the statements issued today by both the Biden White House and the Department of Justice have failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance
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to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok's availability to over 170 million Americans. Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical
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service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19."
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Over four years later, and for the same reasons as India, the US has banned Tiktok
 
www.theverge.com

TikTok is down in the US

How long will this temporary shutdown last?
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

TikTok and CapCut’s apps have started to shut down in the US, telling users, ‘you can’t use TikTok for now’ due to the ban.
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The shutdown has the astonishing effect of removing a social network used by 170 million people in the US, according to TikTok’s own numbers. While other social media platforms have experienced outages, even prolonged ones, no network as big as TikTok has simply shut down without any indication of if or when it will come back online.
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Edit: TikTok's self ban didn't last very long.

www.cbsnews.com

TikTok starts restoring service in the U.S. after shutting down over divest-or-ban law

President-elect Donald Trump vowed to issue an executive order on Monday to postpone the ban on TikTok from going into effect.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com

TikTok began restoring service to users in the United States following a temporary and voluntary shutdown that lasted less than a day. The company said Sunday that it was in the process of reinstating access after President-elect Donald Trump vowed to try to pause the ban by executive order on his first day in office.
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This is getting even more funny by the minute


How TikTok has changed after the US ban
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Following the brief blackout, multiple users reported significant changes upon the app’s return, including vastly different “For You” pages and restrictions on live streams. One TikTok user, Allie Hamrick, garnered over a million views on her video detailing the eerie changes she noticed.

Hamrick first described the “red flag” messages that appeared on users' screens during the app's shutdown and subsequent reinstatement. Both messages prominently mentioned Donald Trump and his role in “saving” the app, also referring to him as the President even though he had not actually been inaugurated yet. Chelsea Jordan posted a separate viral video which criticised the shutdown messages saying: “It screams propaganda and you can't convince me otherwise.”

Hamrick also describes how another creator she follows found that every single comment under her videos about Trump, or talking negatively about TikTok, now has to be approved, and remains censored if not. This means she is left with thousands of comments she has to manually approve.

Intrigued by this creators video, Hamrick tried to share it with her friends through Messenger but says, despite encountering no issues with sharing other TikTok videos that day, this specific video failed to be sent as a link. She then tried to share a video about the CEO of TikTok reposting MAGA (Make America Great Again) content and faced the same issue, which furthered her concerns about selective censorship.

Similarly, another user, Alyssa Jay, reported issues when trying to share a video comparing China’s free healthcare system and lower living costs to the US. She received a message stating, “sharing is limited to one chat at a time,” and upon attempting to share further, another warning appeared: “You have reached the sharing limit. This is to limit the spread of potentially harmful content.” This was not something that she had experienced prior to the ban. In response to the message displayed, Jay argued: “This video wasn’t harmful; it was just comparing the freedoms of two different countries. It feels like our freedom of speech is being chipped away.”


Many users have also noticed changes to TikTok’s live-streaming feature. Lives no longer appear in feeds as frequently, which Hamrick speculated could be due to the difficulty of censoring live content in real time. While some users noted that lives are still accessible if intentionally searched for, they agreed that it has become harder to stumble upon them organically.

Additionally, reports have surfaced about political content being removed from the platform. Videos of protests during Trump’s inauguration and those linking the California wildfires to climate change have seemingly disappeared from the algorithm. Users across the US and Europe have also reported being unable to search or comment on certain phrases, such as “Free Luigi Mangione”. In one now-deleted TikTok video, a user shared that upon opening Facebook, she was immediately prompted to link her TikTok account to the Facebook app - a feature she had never encountered before.
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LoL. TikTok fans having a leopardatemyface moment.
 
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